Julie
This time there was no knock.
The door flew open, and The Instructor himself stepped into Julie’s room. He was dressed in blue scrubs this time, looking like a doctor, although she didn’t think he was one. His face looked tight, his skin flushed, and he stood with his shoulders shoved back and hands balled to fists by his sides.
Julie scrambled to her feet, heart pounding. She’d been watching TV, a singing competition reality show, and the music warbled on about lost love and heartbreak.
“You’re coming with me,” The Instructor said.
She didn’t want to, especially when anger was rolling off of him like heat waves. She stepped back, her calves pressing against the love seat. “Why? What happened?”
He shot her a glare, as if she should know damn well.
“Is it Chandler?”
“Now.”
Julie clenched her hands, her palms damp, fingers trembling. The only reason she’d agreed to give him what he wanted was to protect Chandler. Now that she knew Chandler wasn’t under his control, he could go screw himself. “You can’t hurt me. Not any more than you already have.”
“I most certainly can. Young lady, you have no idea how bad life can get. But why should I hurt you, when I can hurt your friends?” He made friends sound like a dirty word.
“I know you don’t have Chandler. You don’t even know where she is.”
A muscle along his jaw clenched.
“And how do you know that?”
Oh God, she shouldn’t have said anything. The only person she had talked to in days was Derek, and she’d just given him away. “If you knew where she was, you would have told me more than you have.”
He looked down at the floor, relaxed his hands, letting them hang at his sides. When he looked back up, his face was different. No longer angry. A picture of patient calm.
Eerie.
Had he believed her excuse? She couldn’t tell. His face gave away nothing at all.
“Now, come with me, Julie,” he said in a soft voice. “I have something you need to see. Then we can talk about Chandler.”
Julie wrapped her arms around her middle. She didn’t want to go, but if she didn’t cooperate, nothing would stop him from forcing her. “Will I be coming back to this room?”
“That depends entirely on you.”
Julie stepped toward him, swallowing into a parched throat. She didn’t want him to hit her, but if he did, she’d deal with it.
The Instructor studied her with those blank eyes until the hair rose on the back of her neck. He raised his hand to her face and skimmed his fingers down her cheek. “It’s really too bad you didn’t take me up on my offer. But after this, I’m hoping you’ll see things in a different light and realize how important it is to keep me happy.”
Revulsion crawled over Julie’s skin, but she forced herself not to react. “You wanted me to see something?”
“Follow me.”
He led her out of the room and down the hall. She had only walked the halls twice, but she recognized they were heading in a different direction. Not toward The Instructor’s office. And while she wasn’t convinced that should make her feel relieved, it did.
They came to a sally port: two doors separated by a short hall. When The Instructor opened the first door, it made a sucking sound, and Julie felt like she was walking against the wind. They entered, the door closing behind. Then a buzzer sounded, and The Instructor opened the door on the other side to similar effect.
An effort to keep the virus isolated. To keep her isolated.
They passed several doors then came to a T. Julie glanced through another set of doors to see three security guards, before The Instructor whisked her in the other direction.
The place was a maze of halls and doors, but she could guess their purpose. There were two parts of this building, her part and the one everyone else occupied. As if they couldn’t get far enough away from her for their liking.
She didn’t blame them.
A woman stood at the end of the hall, watching them. She wore no protective gear. Hair smooth and chic in a blond bob, she looked like she’d stepped out of a New York fashion magazine—not one of the models, but an editor or executive. Like she had some power and wasn’t afraid to wield it like a sharp sword.
Her leg was wrapped in bandages, a crutch under her arm, and she watched Julie with bored, bitchy eyes.
“Where’s Rhett?” The Instructor asked the woman.
“How should I know?”
“Find him. I’m going to need assistance.”
Giving a huff, the woman turned and limped down the hall.
They turned a corner, and The Instructor led her into yet another hall, this one looking exactly like the last: a maze of tile, blank walls, and closed doors.
“Here we are,” The Instructor said, stopping at a door at the end of the hall. He opened it and ushered Julie inside.
The space looked like some sort of locker room, lockers lining the walls with benches in front of them. He led her through that area and through an air-locked door. This room was tiled and looked like a shower, but the most striking thing about it was the purple light. It flooded every square inch, making her hair glow lavender where it curled along her collarbone.
During all those lonely evenings at the lighthouse, she’d read up on viruses. At least enough to know that ultraviolet light made them unable to replicate. She wasn’t sure if that was the case with her virus. Her virus was engineered to be a weapon, and it was possible many of the rules she read about didn’t apply.
Another air-locked door, and the next room was filled with supplies. Tape, latex gloves, and receptacles marked with biohazard signs. Hazmat suits hung on the wall flanking yet another door.
“We don’t need any of this gear, do we Julie?”
Julie wasn’t sure why he was taunting her. Maybe to remind her that he was inoculated, that he was invincible, that she was powerless to hurt him.
She didn’t need the reminder.
The Instructor crossed to the door and peered through the small window in its center. “Looks like they’re ready for us.”
He opened this door and led her into a sally port like the one near her room. Once the first door was closed, he opened the second.
Like the others, the door gave a sucking sound as it opened, and although the air currents felt like they were sucking her into the room, a bad smell washed over her in a wave. Earthy and feral and almost overpowering, the smell made Julie feel sick. She covered her mouth and nose with a hand, but she could still taste it as if it had already coated her tongue.
The Instructor waved Julie inside.
The room looked just like the first room he’d kept her in, only instead of one bed in the empty space there were two. The first held a woman, or what was left of her. She was Julie’s age, with shoulder-length, black hair, and her mouth was open, as if it was difficult for her to breathe. Her wrists were fastened to the bed rails with thick Velcro straps, but the arms themselves were so covered with red and purple bruises, there wasn’t an inch of normal skin. She watched Julie with sunken, bloodshot eyes, staring blankly as if she was barely conscious of her surroundings.
Julie stepped back in horror. She could sense others in the room, but she couldn’t pull her eyes away from the sight. She’d seen something like it before, back in the lab on Plum Island, before she knew she was infected. And it had haunted her nightmares ever since.
“Julie.”
She turned toward the voice, to the second bed…
Oh God.
“Derek!”
Secured to the bed just like the woman, Derek’s face was bruised, one eye almost closed and lip swollen. But the bruising appeared natural, like he’d been beaten up, not like the woman. She’d never seen him without his hazmat suit. She’d also never seen him as frightened, desperate, and angry as he looked now.
She spun to face The Instructor. “What is going on? Why is Derek here?”
“Dr. Fossen was planning to sell out his country, Julie.”
She shook her head. This was wrong. God, this was so wrong.
“He was caught leaking important information. Information vital to our nation’s security.”
So she hadn’t given Derek away. The Instructor already knew. “That’s not what he was doing.”
“He’s a traitor.”
“A traitor because I wanted people to know you’re kidnapping citizens? Holding them prisoner?” Derek’s voice cracked. “Killing people?”
Julie looked at the woman. Nausea swamped her, not because of the sight, but because she knew what was wrong with her.
“It was me. It was my blood.”
“It’s not your fault, Julie.”
“It is. They took my blood. They…” And if The Instructor had done this to the woman, did he intend to do the same to Derek?
“It’s my fault. If he was trying to tell someone, that’s only because I asked him to.”
“He chose his path, Julie.”
He chose his path? “You said earlier that Derek needed extra persuasion to work on this project.”
The Instructor smiled. “Even that didn’t prove enough. And maybe that is your fault.”
“Don’t listen to him, Julie,” Derek said. “Nothing is your fault. It’s this sick bastard. This Instructor. He likes hurting people, Julie. He likes killing them. This would have happened whether you were here or not.”
The Instructor spoke first. “This woman in the bed beside him is Derek’s sister.”
His sister?
“She won’t be getting her kidney transplant. We gave her something else instead. A bit of your blood.”
Julie felt dizzy. She looked to Derek, wanting him to say The Instructor was lying. Wanting him to say anything but what she’d just heard. “This is her?”
Derek looked away, his cheeks wet with tears.
Julie wanted to go to him, to hold him, to make everything OK. But she couldn’t make it OK. It would never be OK again. “Oh God, Derek. I’m so sorry.”
“You should have told me Dr. Fossen was planning to talk to a reporter, Julie. I wish you would have. It didn’t have to come to this. But this country is too important, and it’s my job to make sure it’s safe.”
Pressure built at the bottom of Julie’s throat. Vomit, a scream, she didn’t know which. “What are you…”
The door sucked open, and a man wearing jeans, boots, and a button-down shirt strolled inside like it was nothing. “What I miss?”
Julie recognized him from the boat the night they’d taken her from the lighthouse. This must be Rhett.
The Instructor nodded to the cowboy, and in a streak of motion too fast for Julie to follow, Rhett was by her side, one hand on her elbow, one bending her wrist back just enough to control her.
Julie stared at Derek. She didn’t know what was coming next. She was afraid to know.
“It’s not a surprise, really,” said The Instructor. “A pretty girl like you, a damsel in distress, what kind of red-blooded male would be loyal to his sister when he might have a shot at you?”
“A romance, huh?” Rhett drawled in Julie’s ear. “Hot damn.”
“The pity is, they never even got to kiss.”
“Like two star-crossed lovers, huh?”
“Maybe you could help them fix that, Rhett.”
“It’d be a pleasure.”
Rhett forced Julie to step forward. She twisted and fought, but that just made him move behind her, pin her arm behind her back, and raise it up to her shoulder blades, until she couldn’t take the pain, couldn’t control her body.
The cowboy had pushed Julie’s face an inch from Derek’s when he met her eyes. “Not your fault,” Derek said. Then she got another press from behind and their lips were sealed.
“Just call me goddamn Cupid,” Rhett said.
Julie began to cry and couldn’t make herself stop.
Chandler
“The secret to success is to clear your mind of side matters and focus on the mission,” The Instructor said. “Emotion is the strongest motivator there is, but it’s also dangerous. Passion can cloud the mind and cause desperation where there needs to be control. Don’t feel, do.”
Unable to find a sign of the boy, I’d returned to the cartonero’s truck, dragged his body from the floor of the cab, threw it into one of the holes, and buried it. Then I placed cardboard over the floor and seats and cleaned up the rest as best I could. I would have preferred driving the late-model green Ford, of course, but I didn’t wanted Los Zetas on my tail if I could help it. With the cartonero’s body buried, it would take them a while to realize he was involved in the massacre at all. And the longer it took them to tie the mess to him, the longer I would have to freely use his truck.
I discovered an extra thousand pesos in the cartonero’s glove compartment, along with a tied bundle of twigs that I recognized, and a pack of Doublemint gum. I found my way to Highway 85 out of town, switching to Highway 75 near Monterrey. With the window open to disperse the smell, I opened the bundle of khat and began to strip off the epidermis of a stem with my teeth, which I then chewed. It was astringent and sour, sort of like chewing an aspirin, and soon dried up all the saliva in my mouth. I added a stick of gum, and drove as the drug took effect.
Khat was popular in the Middle East, and gaining favor in Latin America. Chewing it provided euphoric and stimulant effects, the perfect companion for a cartonero driving long distances every day. It tasted like gnawing on a Christmas tree, but with my lack of sleep I needed the boost, and it also helped me focus.
Dawn started to pink the sky, and my drive was mountainous and quite beautiful. The combination of my successful escape from sure disaster and the khat fueled me into the next day.
Self-doubt, my ass.
I thought a lot about the little boy I’d seen in the landfill during the entire drive. Like most Americans, I’d heard about the poverty in Mexico, but seeing it up close and in the form of an innocent child was different.
I’d known some horrible people: my abusive adoptive father being the first, my homicidal boyfriend Cory the next, and of course, The Instructor. But I’d never teetered on the edge of starvation, and I’d never lived in a hole in the dirt.
The Instructor’s Ebola attack might start in the bullfighting ring, but it would spread. Through the streets of Mexico City, out along the highways and airways, until it brought an already struggling country to its knees. And the thought that the new president and The Instructor would slaughter the people of Mexico, children like the boy I’d seen in the garbage, for political power, didn’t make me sad or panicked or doubtful.
It made me furious.
And I was going to make damn well sure it didn’t happen.
I puzzled over the delivery system, ruling out food and water contamination because Ebola was spread via bodily fluids. They probably tinkered with it, but even if people could get infected through swallowing the virus, that seemed like a sporadic way to distribute. Maybe it was Vaccination Day at the bullring, each attendee getting what they thought was a DTaP shot. Sort of like getting a free cap when you go to a ballgame. Or maybe that was the khat talking.
Ruling out ingestion and injection left inhalation. Ebola wasn’t aerosolized, but I wouldn’t put it past The Instructor to figure out how to do it. That meant I would be looking for a reservoir that could spray virus. The ventilation system would be the way to do it for an indoor event—that was how Legionnaires’ disease was spread. So what would be the equivalent for outdoors? Did Mexico have cooling stations like US theme parks did, spraying cool mist when people walked beneath them? A possibility…
Thanks to the radar detector and the stimulant, I made record time via the toll roads, and by the time the sun rose above the mountains, I was heading into the city.
Mexico City was a jumbled-up cross between rich and poor, sophistication and chaos, the aroma of five-star cuisine and the stench of
rot. Fresh-air food markets and world-class museums met squalor and hopelessness. The city itself sat high above sea level in the caldera of a dead volcano, the peaks holding a fog of hot smog over the city. At a population of more than eight million and a surrounding metropolitan area well over twenty, that was a lot of smog, a lot of noise, a lot of heat.
By the time I arrived, I was exhausted, hungry, and stiff. My nerves were also totally unprepared for the tangle of buses and cars driving to and fro with little heed for any rules of any road. But after a few close calls, I fell into the familiar suicidal groove like slipping into a favorite pair of shoes.
Unfortunately in this traffic, it was impossible to tell if I was being followed. So once I closed in on my destination, I stashed the cartonero’s pickup in a small private lot in a less than affluent neighborhood. The back still jammed with cardboard, I left the keys in the ignition. I was betting the truck would be gone within minutes, blood and all, making it impossible for Los Zetas to tie me to the murders in the landfill. The last thing I needed was more people after me.
I flagged down one of the green VW bugs that served as taxicabs in the city. Hailing a cab on the street was considered a somewhat risky thing to do in Mexico City, since taxi robberies happened disturbingly often. But since a garden-variety robber was several notches down on my list of threats, I figured I was safe enough. My biggest concern at the moment was sweating to death.
I directed the cab to take me to the nearest shopping area, and there I bought a lightweight top, cargo pants, and sunglasses to obscure the lines of my face and my injuries, then flagged down a different cab.
Closing in on El Plaza de Toros México, I spotted a bike pulling a cart, commonly called a pedicab in the United States. I’d once hijacked one of these and raced through the streets of New York, pulling a mother-son duo who’d refused to vacate. I’d been trying to save Julie, and seeing one of the contraptions now made me think of her.
What was she going through?
What was in store for her?
Heaving a breath of sour smog, I found a compartment deep in my heart and locked my concerns safely inside. Fleming would find Julie. I had to trust that. And if I’d proven anything over the past days, tangling my personal feelings with work led to disaster.
Flee, Spree, Three (Codename: Chandler Trilogy - Three Complete Novels) Page 89