Swarm

by Guy Garcia

  “Good timing,” JT said good-naturedly. “Remind me to travel with you more often.”

  A man with a bullhorn warned the occupants that they had five minutes to surrender before the use of lethal force, and Duggan braced himself for the next fusillade. JT raised his head to get a peek at the building. “I have a bad feeling these guys aren’t going to surrender.”

  Duggan watched a young man in a brown suit talking to a cluster of SWAT commandos like a football coach on game night. The group dispersed, and a moment later he heard shouts and lifted his head to see a pair of armored agents run up to the entrance and release a satchel before scurrying back.

  “Fire in the hole!” somebody cried. The explosion was strong enough to knock down the door and blow out most of the remaining windows, which were obscured by billowing smoke. There was another volley of tear gas projectiles, followed by a squad of commandos who rushed the building. The gun reports, isolated at first, escalated to a ricocheting crescendo, like popcorn on a hot stove, before becoming more intermittent. There was a lull and then a single final bang.

  “Goddammit,” Duggan said.

  “I’m sorry, Jake. I tried to get them to wait, but you know how it is with the FBI.”

  “I sure do.”

  They waited for the all-clear signal and then got up and walked over to the man in the brown suit, who was on his phone requesting medical support for the dead and wounded. When he saw them, he raised his finger for them to wait. They did.

  “Vid Rico, FBI Critical Incident Response team,” he said, extending his hand. “I heard you guys were coming.”

  Duggan shook Rico’s hand. “You were supposed to wait until we got here.”

  Before letting go, Rico answered, “Couldn’t do it. We could hear them destroying evidence inside.”

  The men simultaneously released their grips. “I’m sure you were just following orders,” Duggan said acidly. “Can we go inside before your men destroy the evidence you were so worried about?”

  “Sure thing. I’ll walk you in myself.” Rico called out for gas masks and handed a couple to Duggan and JT

  They entered the building just as the ER vans arrived on the scene. The first floor was a smoldering obstacle course of overturned desks, smashed computers, and corpses. Piles of paper were still burning in one corner. A Celtics basketball jersey nailed to a blood-splattered wall had been crudely customized with the words “Meta Militia.”

  They climbed stairs to the second floor, which had served as a makeshift dormitory, and judging from the pile of bodies draped across the bunks, that was where the surviving defenders had made their last stand. There was a thick trail of blood leading up to the third floor.

  “Get behind me,” Rico ordered.

  They followed the red smear up the stairs and though a warren of small offices, all of them empty except for one. Kenneth Ulrich was hunched over his desk with a gun in his hand and an expanding puddle of blood under his chair.

  “Is that the guy you were looking for?” Rico asked.

  “Yeah,” Duggan confirmed. He looked back at the stairs, retracing the final frantic moments of Ulrich’s life. “Why would someone who was mortally wounded drag himself all the way to the third floor just to get to his desk?”

  JT shrugged. “Workaholic?”

  “His computer’s still on,” Rico noticed. “And it looks like he just sent somebody a file.”

  Duggan leaned in to look at the computer screen. “It must have been a pretty important message.” He looked at JT. “Can you get me a copy of that file ASAP? And I want to know where it went.”

  “I’m on it,” JT said. He pointed to a snapshot tacked to the wall next to the desk: two young men leaning toward the camera in a double selfie, smiling. “That’s Ulrich, right? But who’s the other guy?”

  Duggan took out his phone to take pictures of the Post-its arranged in a neat grid around the photo, all of them lime green. “That’s Donald Westlake,” he said.

  The rented Esplanade descended into a bucolic valley bordered by a two-lane paved road on the north and a meandering tree-lined creek to the south. In the center of the valley, on a two-hundred-acre grassy plain, teams of construction workers were putting the finishing touches on a towering X polyhedron buttressed by lighting rigs and hi-res LED screens. Arriving at the cluster of temporary tents serving as the X-ist festival’s onsite headquarters, Tom, Xander, and Fabian emerged from the SUV and marveled at the full size realization of their crowd-funded vision.

  “Holy shit,” Xander exclaimed, leaning back to take in the scene. “It’s unbelievable what people can do when they put their minds together.”

  “So true,” Tom said.

  “It’s a goddamn miracle is what it is!” Fabian proclaimed. “Eighty-five feet tall, plus twenty feet for the base and another sixty-five for the trapeze platform and Elmo’s fire rods!” Fabian surveyed the buffet and beverages laid out for lunch and fished out a Diet Coke. “One hundred and seventy feet— three feet taller than U2’s three-hundred-and-sixty-degree claw stage. We’re going to make it into the Guinness Book of frigging World Records!”

  Fabian’s phone emitted the sound of money being shoveled over the bass line from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. He raised his hand before answering. “Speaking of which,” he said. “Yeah, escort the media from the press tent to the front of the base platform, and we’ll do the video Q&As in the DJ module. See you in five.”

  “We don’t need any publicity,” Xander said peevishly. “X-ist was completely sold out three weeks ago.”

  “If even half of the people who bought tickets actually show up next week, this place will be mobbed,” Fabian agreed. “Don’t worry. I’ve got two helicopters booked to fly you and the other VIPs back and forth from Philly. And I got you guys this …” Fabian reached into a small case he’d been carrying and pulled out a handgun that Tom recognized as a Walter PPK—compact, beautiful, and capable of stopping anything on two feet.

  “Whoa!” Xander exclaimed, recoiling from the weapon. “I’m not touching that thing!”

  “You don’t have to,” Fabian said. “It’ll be taped to the underside of the master mixing board in the DJ module. Just a little insurance.” He looked at Xander and Tom. “You guys are the only ones who’ll even know that it’s there. Anyway, that’s enough housekeeping. Here’s what’s important: The DJs, the contributors, the fans, the foundation, the workers who broke their asses at double wage to get this done in time, they all deserve to be recognized and celebrated. I’ve kept the interviews to a minimum, like you asked, so please let’s show a little enthusiasm here.”

  “Tommy, come with me,” Xander said. “This is your design more than anybody’s. I’m not even sure I understand this augmented reality thing you’ve cooked up.”

  Tom raised his arms in a gesture of deflection. “Sorry, bro; it’s your mug that they want,” he said. “All you need to say about augmented reality is that we’ll have special 3-D visual effects that people can view with their smartphones in real time. The radio wristbands will automatically upload the software to their phones to create an unprecedented collective experience.”

  Fabian looked up from his texting. “He’s the smart one, isn’t he?”

  “Nah, we’re equally smart,” Xander corrected. “I’m just better-looking.”

  “Okay, whatever. Motherboard is waiting.” Fabian hustled his star client in the direction of the giant X. “Tom, I told them one hour max, plus a photo shoot. There’re plenty of food and drink.”

  “Take your time,” he told them. “I’ve got some stuff to do for the augmented reality script.”

  Tom took out a tablet and started scanning the perimeter of the area. Then he videotaped the lighting towers and the main stage. His phone was chirping more than usual. The 4chan/b/ boards were going crazy over an FBI assault on a Meta Militia safe house in Mas
sachusetts. The media was reporting that all the militia members had been killed on the scene, but according to the 4chan posts at least a few had escaped. The news only reinforced Tom’s resolve to initiate X-ist before the authorities clamped down.

  When he got back to the SUV, a husky man with a red beard wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt with red suspenders was sitting in a folding chair drinking a can of Rolling Rock.

  “Hi, I’m Jed,” he said, extending his paw.

  “Tom.”

  Jed nodded toward the soaring structure. “You gonna get on top of that thing?”

  “Ah, yeah, eventually.”

  “At night?”

  “Definitely.”

  “I can’t imagine what that’s like, looking out at thousands of people, controlling their bodies.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “With the music and lights, I mean. You make them dance, right? The hot girls. And then you take them to your trailers backstage and … you know.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we do,” Tom said.

  “Awesome!”

  Tom unfolded a Pennsylvania state map and pointed to a circle he had inked onto the heart of Amish farm country. “We’re here, right?” He rotated toward the river. “And that’s south.” Then he pulled the tourist pamphlet from his back pocket and spread it out on a plywood worktable.

  “Gee,” Jed said, “I didn’t take you for the sort of guy who was into Amish hayrides and Hershey’s candy factories.”

  “I’m just getting my orientation. I like to know what’s around me. How long would it take to get to Washington, DC, from here? On foot, I mean.”

  “Hmm, let’s see. A hundred and twenty miles at about five miles an hour. Thirty hours, maybe.” Jed grinned. “That’s with no stopping for sleeping or eating, of course. But you don’t seem like the extreme hiking type either.”

  A low rumble echoed through the valley, and Jed craned his neck toward the source. He pointed over the trees to where black anvil clouds were massing. “Looks like some big thunder is brewing. Summer squalls can come out of nowhere this time of year.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jed said. “We’ll put some rods at the top of the tower to catch any stray bolts. The electron discharges can be pretty darn spectacular.”

  There was another ominous rumble, but Tom ignored it. “I’m bringing my own lightning,” he said.

  Duggan had made a reservation at the same restaurant that was the setting for their first real date. Nursing a sparkling water as he sat at the bar to wait for Cara, he fidgeted with his cocktail napkin and suppressed the urge to check his phone. He wasn’t the type to be nervous before meeting his girlfriend for dinner, but the stakes were unusually high tonight. Duggan looked up and watched her saunter in, entranced all over again by her angular allure. But first there was a bit of business to address.

  “Are you going to tell me where you’ve been the last couple days?” Cara asked once they’d been seated. “Your phone was turned off the whole time.”

  “It’s better for both of us if I don’t tell you.”

  “Of course,” Cara said. “Why do I even bother?”

  The waiter appeared with the top-notch cabernet Duggan had preselected, and Cara raised her eyebrows as it was poured. “We’ll, aren’t you the clever one,” she said approvingly. “Looks like someone is expecting to get lucky tonight.”

  “You bet I am,” Duggan said, tipping the rim of his glass against hers.

  They savored the wine for a few seconds before Duggan spoke again. “I don’t mean to be obnoxious, baby, but the truth is that where I was and what I was doing is irrelevant. What matters right now is that I’m finally getting the support I need, which means I have to go back to headquarters and put together a task force for X-ist.”

  “Exist?”

  “It’s an EDM festival that’s happening about thirty miles west of Philadelphia. It could be our last chance to catch Swarm. We think he’s preparing to use a new, stronger version of the zeph.r beam, one with a mobile capability.”

  “The girlfriend in Austin didn’t lead you to him?”

  “No, not yet, but she still might. She says she’ll know him if she sees him, and I’ll make sure he sees her. When he takes the bait, I’ll be waiting.”

  “But, Jake,” Cara protested, “if the zeph.r signal is strong enough, there could be an enzootic spillover effect.”

  “Please translate.”

  “There’s a whole field of cross-species spillover effects leading to viral contamination,” Cara explained. “You know, diseases that people get from exposure to animals, like bubonic plague from fleas, avian flu from birds …”

  “Or human swarming from locusts,” Duggan said.

  “No, this is different, although there are some significant parallels. In an emergent scenario at least, the people exposed to zeph.r aren’t catching swarm behavior from locusts. They are assuming the symptoms of swarming from morphogenesis within their own species.”

  It was the opening Duggan had been waiting for. “Cara, didn’t you do some experiments in Africa to control locust swarms?”

  “The experiments were a failure,” she said tightly.

  “That’s not what I heard.” He had never seen her so upset. Duggan waited while Cara took a sip of wine and regained her composure.

  “You spoke to Eric, didn’t you?”

  “Don’t be mad. It’s not his fault. If I locate Swarm, maybe I can at least use the PHAROH beam on him before he releases zeph.r.”

  “Absolutely not,” she protested. “Did Eric also tell you PHAROH killed some of the locusts? We have no idea what it might do to people. I don’t care how dangerous Swarm is—I’m not going to be an accessory to murder. But I will go with you to Pennsylvania, if you want me to. Eric can watch the lab and maybe I can help you figure something out once we’re there.”

  The waiter arrived with their food, and they disengaged like boxers returning to their corners. The food was delicious, but Duggan was too stressed to enjoy it. He chewed slowly and wiped his mouth before resuming the bout.

  “Actually, I was thinking of inviting Eric,” he said. “He’s been to some of the raves; he knows the EDM scene. Plus, he can help me protect my men from zeph.r.”

  “That’s …” Cara’s voice faltered. “That’s very nice of you.”

  “I’m not being nice, just practical. I need his expertise on the task force team. It makes sense. Just like it makes sense to use PHAROH as a backup at X-ist.”

  Cara’s expression curdled. “Jake, I already told you, I won’t allow it.”

  “I thought you became a scientist to help people,” Duggan persisted. “You just explained to me how dangerous zeph.r is. What could happen if Swarm uses it on a crowd that size? Aren’t you being a little selfish?”

  Cara’s face reddened. Duggan knew that if he pushed too hard, it could spoil the whole evening, but he had to try.

  “Listen, I get it,” he said. “You have to protect your reputation in case something goes wrong. Nobody has to know where PHAROH came from except for the three of us. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Jake, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said sharply. “The man from the Defense Department wanted to use my research on insects to create swarms of bees and flying clones, a cloud of killing machines acting as a single organism. I think they’ve been doing experiments in the Bay Area. The bees at the Fairmont have something wrong with them. I found evidence of unexplained supersedure—that’s when the hive kills its own queen. The other night in my dream, I saw …”

  Duggan watched helplessly as Cara’s throat constricted, her eyes welling up with the blind panic of a recurring nightmare. He watched as she replayed the horrific memory of returning to the scene of the experiment in Africa, only to encounter legions of locusts, twitching and c
licking and oozing green fluid as they convulsed and expired, shattered by PHAROH’s disruptive death ray.

  In her dream the locusts metamorphosed again, this time into millions of drones the size of dragonflies, with squadrons of insects of all kinds becoming smarter and faster, grasping their advantage, taking to the air by the trillions, blackening the skies and rallying their quiescent comrades, conquering their only competition on the planet by drilling into the fighting machines and uniforms of their former masters, gnawing through wires and clogging triggers, passing on the tricks they had learned in their cages at the DOD, micro-mercenaries recruited and armed with poisons and miniature bombs, and rogue mobs of vengeful warrior bees dancing to point the way and spread the word that the time had come to wage holy insect war and rid the planet of its human infestation once and for all.

  “Cara, Cara!” Duggan reached out to touch her hand, but she flinched and pulled away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to …”

  “Of course you did,” she snapped, using her napkin to blot away the tears. “I’m such a fool. I thought it could be different this time. I thought you could be different this time.”

  “Cara, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about why it can never work between us.”

  Duggan stared into his glass until he was sure she wasn’t joking.

  “Look, I’m sorry about leaving town so abruptly again, but you of all people know how important this is. I’d stay if I could.”

  “Right now, that’s the last thing I want you to do,” she said coldly.

  “Hey, don’t be like this. I was looking forward to a …”

  But Cara was still seething. “Whatever we’ve been doing the past few months, whatever this is, it isn’t love, or even commitment. Our whole relationship is a checklist of complementary attributes that satisfy our work schedules and physical needs.”

  It was Duggan’s turn to take umbrage. “Really? That’s all I am to you? A ‘checklist of attributes’?”