by Bradley West
“Is the Maharishi or Yoko in residence?” asked Barb to a chorus of sniggers.
“When I contacted him, at first I thought it was all about reborn hippiedom and free love. The fellow’s a Canuck like Derek, but he made his money operating a gas station and minimart chain in California. He sold out in late 2019 and moved to Spice Land. There seem to be more than fifty people with him, a few families but mostly younger women from the website photos. I wired him fifty thousand dollars to stock up on supplies plus food. I haven’t been in touch with him for several days, but he knows we’re coming.”
“I don’t care if it’s a thousand hippies,” Jaime said. “No way they can rip us off.”
“After what we’ve been through, I agree. What I don’t know is whether he has kept our goods safe, whether we can access the unused portion of his property, and why last week his website posted new photos of armed men with captions reading, ‘Spice Land Liberation Army ready to defend its home soil. Outsiders, STAY AWAY.’ I wrote to ask what was up, but I haven’t checked my email in three or four days and I don’t know if he replied.”
“Sounds like he armed his acolytes to keep the mob from invading his commune,” Travis said.
“I hope that’s the case,” Sal said. “The deal with Spice Bob is that we stay away from his people and vice versa. We agreed the 3M enters and leaves through the back gate only, and we’re out by end of July. Their website brags that they’re self-sufficient in food, and I’d hoped Barb might wangle a tour to check out what they’re doing on the regenerative ag front to give us ideas for Thunderdome.”
“Speaking of which, just how far north are we headed?” Kyle asked.
“We have another fifteen hundred miles (2,400km) to drive, most of it in Canada. We’ll cross the border on a backroad next week and travel by night. BC should be less crazy than the States, at least once we’re through the more populated south.”
“The property is farther north than southern Alaska,” Carla said. “It’s miles and miles from any towns. We’ll need to be totally self-sufficient.”
“That was the idea when I bought it. We must establish a self-sustaining haven. Once we do that, we’ll help others based on what we know and picked up along the way. But if we don’t focus single-mindedly on our own survival between now and then, we won’t be able to help anyone.” Sal looked at his watch. “It’s after six. We move out in three hours. Don’t leave behind anything that confirms our identities. We’ll burn all our trash before we go.”
“We will not burn our trash,” Barb said. “Burning, not fossil fuels, is the single biggest greenhouse gas contributor.” She punctuated her objection by waving her empty glass.
Sal played along. “How do we dispose of it?”
“Where we’re going, there won’t be any trash—we’ll have to recycle everything. If you’re dumb, bury it. Otherwise, take everything with us but used toilet paper. What, you think we’ll go out and buy empty oil drums in northern BC?”
“The lady’s got a point,” Derek said.
* * * * *
Time was up. The Twisted Souls’ president looked in on the gagged and handcuffed cop and found him as unhappy as ever, maybe more so now that he’d pissed himself. Norris climbed the stairs to check on the mad scientist and her curry puff assistant. He gave the door an authoritative hammering with his fist. “Where do we stand?”
“Twenty minutes,” Katerina’s replied. “Unless you want to have a fucking discussion. Then it’ll take longer.”
* * * * *
The west end of the Cal campus saw a surge in men in uniform as the afternoon merged into early evening. A tow truck had pulled Officer Watkins’ car from the ocean and an eyewitness had described the driver as a muscular denim-clad skinhead. Once the cruiser had rolled down the boat ramp and into the drink, he’d departed on the back of a loud motorcycle piloted by another biker. The severe police manpower shortage delayed tracking efforts, but the map displayed every stop the car had made since Watkins’ day began at eight.
The Wormell Molecular and Cell Biology Building had hosted the patrol car for more than twenty minutes in the morning. Either Watkins had gone there to take a crap, or he’d found trouble. A crosscheck of the dispatcher’s recordings showed Watkins’ last voice comms were to run the vitals on a Peter Baldwin. The dispatcher had reported an outstanding warrant for jumping bail on a wife-beating charge, and a string of priors including assault with a deadly weapon, narcotics sales and illegal firearms possession. Baldwin was also on the FBI’s watch list for domestic terrorists and a prominent member of the Oakland-based Twisted Souls Motorcycle Club. The lieutenant listened to the recording one more time as his query about Baldwin again came up blank—the man hadn’t popped up on their prisoners list. Meanwhile, Officer Watkins had fallen off the face of the earth.
The alarm bells rang and the shift commander implored the acting chief to bring in the FBI. Calls to the Bureau’s San Francisco anti-kidnapping team went unanswered. Next up was an urgent request for help to the National Guard’s riot containment contingent. While the police waited, the cops dispersed a four-man surveillance team around the building. Over the next ninety minutes, Berkeley PD logged three motorcycles in and one out.
* * * * *
Norris was upstairs weighing the wins and losses from the TSMC’s foray into the dark web drug sales and delivery niche. All but one of the men he’d sent out had returned to base, but just under half the contracted sales failed to materialize because the buyers couldn’t get online to pay or didn’t have sufficient crypto. As per prior instructions, his couriers administered only modest beatdowns to deficient buyers—the Twisted Souls were seeking to educate rather than punish. On a cash-plus-cryptocurrency basis, the Souls were at breakeven, and they still had half the enlarged drug inventory to sell all over again to the fatalistic few still in funds.
The men were restless, lobbying to sample the trove of contraband sitting behind him on the professor’s sofa. Norris knew from the dilated pupils, silly grins and slurred speech that the boys had been dipping, but there was fuck-all he could do about that—he ran a criminal enterprise, not the Boy Scouts. The real question was where they could refill their gas tanks. Everyone was running on empty and someone before them had emptied the tanks of the vehicles in the building’s garage.
“We need a hundred gallons of high-octane gas,” Norris said. “Three days ago, that cost ten grand. Bring twenty and expect to pay up to one hundred and fifty per gallon. Take a man and leave him there to keep everyone honest. We’ll pay at the pump per fill. Word on the street is that Berkeley Marina has a gas barge tied up. It’s three miles down University Avenue. Check it out and report back. I have to sort out our pig in the pokey.”
“He saw Nails, you and me,” Dirty Pete said.
“Yeah, I got that part already. I’m working out whether we off him out of habit, or realize we’re killing a dead man in this Covid town. Maybe just ride overnight someplace else and forget all about Porky. Line up gas soon—we hit the road tonight.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper. I’ll take Nails if he’s not tweaking,” Pete said as he picked up his leather vest and headed out.
* * * * *
From across the way in the Valley Life Sciences Building, an officer on a walkie-talkie reported two bikers speeding away from the Wormell Building’s underground lot. The acting police chief had driven over to the Guard’s temporary HQ tent in Memorial Glade. The assault team leader confirmed that the Stryker armored infantry carrier could be on target in less than five minutes.
“It’s go time,” The colonel said. “Secure the building and you’re cleared to fire on any armed person out of uniform.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Paired Up
Friday, July 17, 2020: Berkeley, California; outside Winnemucca, Nevada, and I-80 northbound; evening
“That should do it,” Katerina said. “We can skim and inject two doses while the rest of the mix settles out overnight. Pack that fla
sk in ice, wipe down and box the last of the equipment, and we’re ready for the moving apes.”
“That’s good news,” Specs said. “I hate this monkey suit.”
From downstairs came a thud that reverberated through the floor. Gunfire sounded, at first sporadic and then nonstop.
“Goddammit! Where’s a syringe?” Katerina pawed through the lab paraphernalia that she’d previously laid out atop the counter. She found one and inserted the needle into the beaker of purified convalescent plasma antibodies to draw off the top layer. “Give me your arm!” she commanded Specs. He had barely bared his deltoid before she plunged the needle home.
Norris pounded on the door. “It’s the Guard! Come on!”
Where was that other needle? She refilled the used syringe and injected herself. It hurt like hell. Then she buried the evidence in the wastebasket, plugged the beaker and closed the box. “Coming!” she shouted as Specs threw the door open and ran ahead of her.
The hallway was empty, but feet sounded on the stairs and radios crackled. The law was closing in. Time to improvise. “Help! Help!” she cried. “In here! I’ve been taken—”
A rough hand clamped over her mouth from behind. “Stuff it or I’ll break your neck.”
* * * * *
Burns and Muller huddled in the lobby close to the router while Muller laboriously plinked at the keyboard. His bandaged right fingertips were clumsy and bloody smudges obscured half the keyboard, putting another obstacle in the hunt-and-peck typist’s way. His first stop was the Pirate Bay bulletin board thread where “Magic Man” had posted he had prepaid in full for the Dark Cure and yet had heard nothing in the last day. Are the Dark Cure and LifeSaver a SCAM? screamed the headline. New inquiries had dried up after that comment appeared three hours ago. “Shit,” Muller said. “We have an unhappy customer.” Burns peered over his shoulder, feigning interest. Muller hadn’t installed a virtual keyboard; whatever he typed would export to Burns’ email inbox.
They heard several gunshots, then a fusillade. Muller slapped down the laptop’s lid. “Turn on the elevator!” he barked at the desk clerk. “I need to go up top and see what’s happening.”
“I can’t do that, sir. Our backup power is below thirty percent,” said the night bird. “The general manager has banned the use of the ele—”
She lost her voice in the next instant when Muller stood and pointed a pistol at her face. He turned and tossed a key ring to Burns, who dropped it. “Downstairs, white vintage Ford XLT pickup parked by the door. Bring it out front and wait. Sounds like our friends are in a firefight.”
Burns limped to the basement steps, wondering why he couldn’t take the lift down one level before Muller raced up to the sixth floor. He looked at his watch: just after seven. The meeting at nine o’clock on the library steps was looking iffy.
* * * * *
Norris took his hand off Katerina’s mouth. “You two-faced bitch. Shut the fuck up!”
Specs ran back into the hallway. “Boss, G. I. Joes all over downstairs. Exits blocked.”
“I used to work here,” Katerina said. “There’s a maintenance tunnel that joins the basement to the Life Sciences Building across the street. Take the back staircase and I’ll show you.” She turned and starting running, Norris and Specs on her heels. She didn’t like agitating the box containing the chilled flask of Dark Cure, but she didn’t have an alternative.
“How do you know about this?” Norris asked as they ran.
“I scored drugs in the tunnel,” she replied as the lights went out in the building.
“We found Watkins!” a voice hollered in the distance. “He’s okay!” More celebratory hoots followed.
Katerina stepped aside as they reached the fire door under the green EXIT sign and Norris took the lead into the darkness with his fancy shotgun in one hand. Katerina’s thoughts of running the other way ended when she considered the certain prospect of getting shot in the back with double-aught buckshot. She couldn’t see for shit in her hazmat headgear and pulled it off. The Dark Cure injection had better work or she was toast.
They passed the lobby landing without incident and were clattering downstairs to B1 when Norris hissed for them to stop. Down below, they heard a door open and saw a flashlight’s beam searching up the steps to the midway point but didn’t reach them. Then the flashlight’s owner shined his beam down the staircase leading to B2 before exiting.
“Be quiet,” Norris whispered. That wasn’t a problem for Katerina and Specs since they were still in their soft-footed hazmat suits. Norris’ square-toed biker boots lightly clicked against the metal runners on the concrete steps. He eased open the steel door and they crouched down to watch the high-intensity beams race about in the inky darkness. The firing had died out—whatever had happened was over.
“Follow me along the edge to the left,” Katerina said. “The tunnel entrance is on the other side.”
“If you run, I’ll cut you down,” Norris said. “I have one in the chamber and six more behind it. I don’t give a fuck what happens after that.”
Katerina thought fast. “That would be a bad business decision. I have a box with a dozen doses in it. We each take one and sell the rest for more than a million dollars. We can still do it if we make the meeting with Burns at nine.”
“Hand the box to Specs and get moving.”
* * * * *
Four nights ago, Melvin Robinson had struck Pat Maggio in the face with his gun butt as she tried to thwart Steph’s abduction. Melvin had seen his boss Muller move to shoot her, and Melvin had saved the woman’s life by knocking her down. An unconscious Pat fell like a sack of bricks and her head fractured on the driveway. Uncertain days followed emergency surgery as she drifted in and out of consciousness. As of yesterday, the old Pat was back and you didn’t have to be Catholic to see a divine hand at work. Since switching sides, Melvin had become Pat’s closest companion, a mixture of prayer partner and gofer. It was a source of double takes to be certain, a towering black man in his late twenties with bullet holes in his right ear and right shoulder at the side of a middle-aged and elegantly attired Filipina American. Two black eyes and a shaved and bandaged head hid her natural beauty, but daily gym sessions and weekly motel room forays had kept her trim. The two looked like the human incarnation of a German shepherd paired with a tiny kitten.
For the first time since Pat’s reawakening, she and her husband talked seriously. The convoy was packed and the troops were in high spirits. They’d somehow come through the Gardnerville-Minden ordeal with no one else killed or seriously wounded, their Covid cases on the mend and everyone vaccinated.
As they surveyed the scene from director’s chairs set up in the bigger blue RV, Pat bared her soul. “I took a lot for granted. You provided well for the girls and me: a lovely house, a grand lifestyle and fancy vacations. You also worked all the time and Steph, Barb and I built our lives without you. I’m sorry we grew apart, but I’m so grateful for everything you’ve done for us during this crisis. I can see now why you were so successful in business.”
Sal was uncomfortable talking about himself, and even less comfortable listening to someone else praise him. “The only things that matter are outcomes. Thanks to you, our girls grew up to become good people. And we’re barely into our journey and my mistakes have cost us dearly.”
Pat leaned over and touched his arm. “We’re alive and together only because of you.”
“I can’t take much credit. Nafarm’s board redirected our entire budget into finding a cure for Covid-19. Our R&D efforts worked well on paper, but our trial vaccines provoked cytokine storms that killed our lab animals. It was Nancy’s side project that saved Steph and Tyson. I could’ve retained a copy of her 896MX formulation and given Burns the originals, but I lost my temper and did something stupid. That’s caused a lot of needless suffering, and there isn’t an hour that passes when I don’t wish I’d done things differently.”
“You’re too tough on yourself,” Pat said. �
��God has a plan, and Melvin has changed me. His faith and remorse called my spirit back from the shadowlands. After my injury, I had no will to regain full consciousness because that would force me to face my false piety, intemperance and unfaithfulness. When I heard Melvin’s prayers through the fog, I knew I had to fight back to the light and better serve my family and our Savior.”
Sal squeezed her hand. “We’re all very relieved that you’re your old self again.”
“I’d like you to speak with Jaime about Barb and see if we can do anything to help them get along better. And where are Greg and Steph? Barb said they went for a drive to enjoy a little solitude, but it’s been a while. Should I be concerned?”
“Honey, there’s been a development on that front.”
* * * * *
Burns left the driver’s side door open and limped to the passenger’s seat. Muller hustled over carrying two backpacks and a pair of laptops. He threw luggage onto the back, hauled himself aboard and slammed the pickup into gear. “The National Guard is swarming around Norris’ building with vehicles backed up three deep and searchlights everywhere. Anyone still on the loose will be in handcuffs soon.” They exited right onto the empty main road, took an illegal left turn and headed toward the turmoil.
“What are you doing?” Burns asked. “We can’t break Katerina out if she’s captured.”
“We’ll circle the perimeter and look for Souls who got away. We have to find out where Katerina is and whether she finished any cure. Then we’ll decide.” Up ahead, two five-ton trucks blocked a street. Muller braked hard and reversed away, ignoring the shouts to halt.