Elixr Plague (Episode 3): Pandemic

by Richardson, Marcus

  In the distance a police siren wailed, but didn’t get any closer. Darren couldn’t see how a cop could do any good at all in that snarled mess.

  Lightning flashed to the west, illuminating low, fast-moving clouds. The wind kicked up, bringing the smell of ozone and mud from the river. Darren stuffed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the sudden chill. “We need to get back to the hotel.”

  “But that’s on the other side of the island,” Brandon blurted. “We took the vans over here this morning, remember?”

  “What about the museum?” asked Carl, blinking in another flash of lightning. Thunder roared, echoing down the street and temporarily drowned out the commotion.

  Amanda looked around, her eyes wide, like she was ready to bolt. “The storm’s getting close, guys. We don’t have much time…”

  “Yeah, we can try the museum, at least till the storm passes,” Darren said. “We’ve got the access cards to get in—they might still be good, even if it’s officially closed.”

  More people exited the bar and stumbled into their group by the street. Several laughed, others grew quiet, and a few cried, but they all wandered off in a few moments—some faster than others. The next clap of thunder had people scurrying for cars or shelter.

  “We gotta do something,” Carl muttered. “We can’t just stand out here in the storm all night.”

  “We can’t go back in the bar,” mumbled Darren. A fat raindrop splashed against his forehead. “Time’s up guys…here comes the rain.”

  “I’m down with the museum,” Amanda said.

  “Me too—we just need to move,” added Brandon.

  Darren threw his hands up. “Great, let’s go. Shit,” he added, stopping after only a few steps. “What about food and something to drink?”

  “I’m good on the drinking part,” Carl said, belching. “I just need to piss.”

  Brandon laughed, a nervous, tight sound. Between the lightning and thunder, cars clogging the road, and people crowding the sidewalks, he looked ready to run. “Let’s figure that out on the way, okay? This is really starting to freak me out.”

  Darren agreed, and they set off toward the Tower of History. A hastily constructed plywood sign hung on the side of the building, proclaiming the coming of the new Scandinavian Heritage Exhibit.

  As they cut their way through stalled traffic, enduring verbal abuse by frustrated drivers, they ducked against the light rain. Luckily, the violence of the storm had yet to hit Sault Ste. Marie.

  “Shoulda gone with Turgin, dammit!” Brandon groused as they moved along the sidewalk, going against the flow of pedestrians toward the river.

  “Watch it!” someone yelled as Darren bumped shoulders.

  “Sorry!” he called, but the press of people had already pulled the stranger away into a sea of heads and confused, angry faces. As the biggest of the PhD and grad students, he felt obliged to lead the way and clear a path.

  “Alright, let’s make some noise,” Darren called over a crash of thunder. “We need to reach that museum!”

  They burst out in another rendition of their viking battle song, voices deep and loud while Amanda’s soprano played harmony. People saw them coming in a wedge formation with Darren at the front, his eyes on fire, and hair flailing in the wind, and they cleared—reluctantly—a narrow path. They got more than a few dirty looks and curses, but their boisterous singing and wild expressions kept people from interfering.

  It took fifteen minutes to go three blocks through the crush of pedestrians, but they exited the sidewalk and found the museum at the base of the massive tower. Now that they had some breathing room, Darren stared at the people flowing by and blinked. “Can you imagine what the big cities are like right now?”

  “God have mercy,” Brandon said.

  “C’mon, let’s try and get inside,” Amanda said, turning away from the panicked crowds.

  4

  Siege Warfare

  Martin Manor

  Beacon Point, Michigan

  Desmond Martin paced before the floor to ceiling panoramic window like a caged animal. The view, normally his favorite, stretched from his manor out over the vast wooded estate toward the old Air Force base at the horizon, on the other side of a wide swath of oaks, maples, and birches planted as a natural barrier back during World War II. The riot of colors they produced in autumn never failed to bring a smile to his face when standing in front of the wall-length portal.

  But not tonight. Tonight, his home was under siege. He smirked ruefully at the irony. His home was an honest-to-God castle he’d purchased and imported from Europe at enormous expense. Then, at even greater expense, painstakingly reassembled, piece by piece, exactly the way it had been built hundreds of years ago in what is now the Czech Republic. He’d gotten the idea after visiting a similar project—a famous hotel in Kentucky—during the early days of his business career.

  Out beyond the matching privacy wall that he’d built several years ago when he and Norman Yang were stalked by the press a few years back, a couple dozen agents from alphabet soup agencies milled around drinking coffee and talking on cell phones under the glow of arc lights. A row of black sedans and white undercover US Marshals squad cars had been parked neatly in the front yard next to several big generators, belching black smoke, as if to signify they were organized and staying for the duration. Desmond frowned. It looked like an impromptu concert parking lot. They even had food trucks parked out there. In his front lawn. Heavy tires tore up the grass and all the manicured landscaping that he’d spent so much money to transform from the wild prairie he’d first encountered when purchasing the land. And the biggest insult was as a taxpayer, he paid their salaries—he paid them to destroy his own property. It was insulting.

  “Pacing like this will get you nowhere, love,” his wife, Catia purred from behind him. The sound of her high heels clicking off the marble floor approached until her long slender arms encircled his waist and hugged him tight to her chest.

  Desmond relaxed, feeling the pressure of her breasts against his back as she embraced him, holding him still with her own body. He closed his eyes and placed his hands on hers, all resting on his sternum. Just a simple touch from her calmed him better than the best drug cocktail on the market. How did she do that?

  Catia was the most passionate woman he’d ever met—whether she was defending the rights of indigenous people in some backward shit hole of a country no one could pronounce, or protecting the habitat of a flying three-toed grasshopper from urban development, Catia Galaz-Martin was a force of nature. Her Spanish temper was legendary, both in its ferocity and in its capacity to flare up from seemingly nothing. The people who worked for—and even those who worked against—her charitable trust stood in awe of her, or at least respected her to a degree that the fact that she was married to one of the richest, most powerful men on the planet never had much of an impact on her own career.

  And yet, Desmond thought, looking down at the smooth, olive skinned hands—graceful hands, like a pianist—that intertwined with his own in such stark contrast of color, he couldn’t help but marvel at how gentle and kind his Catia was, for all her ferocity. The corner of his mouth twitch up. If people only knew how passionate she was in the bedroom, they’d have all sorts of things to say about her—but that aspect of her personality was a secret he coveted, and he shared that knowledge with no one.

  He turned in her embrace and wrapped his arms around her waist, looking down at her upturned face. For a long moment he just looked at her, relishing in the beauty that he possessed by virtue of love and marriage, and thanked God that he was so lucky to breathe the same air as her. Compared to Catia, his business, Elixr—all of it—paled into insignificance.

  Many in the press—before the Elixr debacle—had proclaimed him to be the most selfish, narcissistic man on the planet for seeking a cure to all disease in a Quixotic quest for immortality. They assumed he wanted to live forever because he felt himself that important, that worth
y. Desmond reached up and moved one lock of lustrous brown hair off her forehead and tucked it gently behind one soft ear, his knuckles tracing the outline of her proud, smooth cheek.

  The truth of the matter concerning his supposed quest for immortality lay right here in his arms. He wanted to live forever so that she could—and he could be with her…forever. She held that much power over him. He had admitted to himself years ago that it was hopeless to resist her—her love ruled his life—and he was grateful beyond words.

  “You are amazing,” he murmured, mesmerized.

  She smiled, her face beaming, hazel eyes like liquid pools of love. The most glorious thing about Catia was that Desmond saw the love he felt for her reflected back at him in her eyes every time he looked at her angelic face. With the classic Spanish beauty of her ancient Roman ancestors of Hispania, she could have had any man—or woman—on the planet. Yet she chose him, before he became Desmond Martin, ruler of a corporate empire that stretched around the globe in half a dozen industries. Before—and despite the fact—he became the global pariah, the destroyer of mankind, and the man responsible for the Elixr Plague.

  His mood soured, and his smile faded as he looked past his wife. The press—what was left of it still broadcasting—had taken to calling the modified Elixr virus the Elixr Syndrome in the first few days. Now, with the death tolls climbing by the hour all around the world and rumors of the dead rising to attack the living—spreading the virus even further—they’d started calling it a plague.

  That hurt.

  “Hey,” Catia said in that soft, accented voice reserved only for him. To the rest of the world she spoke in a clear, enunciated English so precise people assumed she’d been born in a grammar school. But with him, she relaxed and let her melodic voice assume its natural idiosyncrasies and inflections. He’d insisted on it when they’d first met. He wanted her as she was or not at all. And from that moment, she’d rarely wore makeup—and never in his presence. He remembered telling her it was a waste of time and money to attempt to improve perfection. Well, he’d spent plenty of both on Elixr…and that was supposed to be an improvement, granting long life and perfect health—

  One soft hand cupped the back of his head and angled his face down to look at her again. “I’m down here.”

  Desmond couldn’t help but smile. He exhaled. “You’re my rock, my anchor. I couldn’t survive without you.”

  She squeezed him tight and rested her head against his chest, her hair just brushing his nose. The scent of sweet jasmine enveloped him. “And you are mine. I wouldn’t be alive right now if…”

  “Don’t say that,” Desmond said sharper than he’d meant. “This mess is getting out of control because of me. If I hadn’t wanted to give Elixr away and made people pay for it like every other drug we’ve created—”

  “You did the right thing, never forget that,” she said in a voice equally sharp, squeezing tight again. “It is the people who changed it, who turned it into a monster…they are to blame for…all of this,” she said.

  To Desmond, ‘this’ meant an awful lot. The destruction of his company by the federal government, the arrest of almost all of his scientists and the confiscation of Martin Enterprises Medical Facilities all over the nation—along with every drop of the original Elixr doses. Except for what remained in lockup at the manor and the research facility on the other side of the trees at the edge of his front yard.

  Catia followed his gaze toward the collection of vehicles, agents, and tire tracks lit by dozens of painfully bright lights. “Forget about those fools,” she murmured into Desmond's chest. "They're not doing anything."

  Desmond shifted so he could see out the window, too. "For now," he exhaled, glaring at the troublemakers in his yard. "They seem to be content to just keep us under siege."

  Catia laughed, the sound tickling his chest. “Do you think they have any idea how many years worth of food and water we have stored away?"

  Desmond shrugged. "I don't know. I'm sure they have some idea—they can pull up purchase histories and stuff like that, right? I think they would've brought more hardware though, if they planned to attack us outright. They seem content to sit and wait for now.” He sighed. “I guess at the end of the day, I don't really mind…it's just the principle of the thing. I’m a prisoner in my own home, and I haven't even been charged with anything."

  "Yet," Catia said, a hint of amusement in her voice. "Give the cretins time, love—I’m sure they have a whole team of lawyers out there right now trying to drum up charges against you." She looked up at him, and smiled. "Just like you have a whole team of lawyers preparing defenses for every conceivable charge."

  Desmond moaned. "I had a whole team of lawyers. I haven’t been in contact with any of them since New York fell."

  "And Edith?" Catia asked with genuine concern. She and Edith had grown close over the years of the younger woman's employment as her husband's executive assistant. “Have you heard anything since she left that dreadful little apartment of hers in Manhattan?”

  Desmond shook his head. "No. My pilot said she never showed up at Laguardia. He had to leave or risk being trapped in the city. I told him he’d lose his job and never fly for anyone again but he didn’t care. It’s that bad out there. He didn’t care,” Desmond said more to himself than to his wife.

  “I can’t believe it’s falling apart that fast…” she whispered.

  Desmond nodded. “With the communications network in New York so spotty, I can’t get a good location on Edith, even with our next-gen security chips in her phone. Frankly I'm starting to worry about her. I wonder if I shouldn't send one of the security teams…"

  "You can't send anyone from here," Catia said, stepping back from her husband, but maintaining her hands on his arms. She looked up at him, her brow creased with concern, and somehow looked even more alluring. "Anyone you send will just be arrested outside the gate, leaving us that much weaker."

  "I'm not convinced this is going to turn into Ruby Ridge or Waco," Desmond said, attempting to assuage her fears with confidence. “I mean, look at them—those guys seem like they’re having a field training session rather than planning an assault. I just don’t see it.”

  Catia scoffed and released her husband. She crossed her arms and leveled at him a look that had sent lesser men running for their lawyers. "That makes one of us. I trust them," she said with an imperious toss of her head in the direction of the federal agents outside, "about us much as I trust a politician."

  Desmond stared out the window at the gaggle of federal officials. "I suppose you're right…you usually are," he added with a wink. “Edith’s a tough young lady, though. She's resourceful, and incredibly smart,” he said, trying to convince himself of the truth of his own words. “If anyone can find a way to get to safety, it’s her."

  "She said she was going to her family farm, didn't she?" asked Catia, with her lilting, softly accented voice.

  "She did," Desmond replied thoughtfully. "I should see if we can maybe send her some supplies or something. We still have a couple of our computer science division locations accessible.” He pursed his lips and thought. "I can have one of the division leaders round up some volunteers and make an airdrop…"

  "That sounds like a good idea," Catia said. She stood next to him, pressing her shoulder against his side. “Have you made any progress on locating the families of your people yet?"

  Desmond put an arm around her waist and held her tight against him. He didn't know what he would do, how he would survive if she weren't safe at his side. "We’re doing the best we can, but we haven't found most of them. This operation will probably kill the annual revenue for the entire corporation," Desmond said, “but I have to keep trying. My executive team holding things together for now, but the longer their families are missing, the quicker things will crumble around us.”

  “You have to find their families, love,” she said softly, a hint of her iron will in that sweetly accented voice.

  "I know,” D
esmond replied, putting steel in his own voice. “I would spend any amount of money to make sure you were safe," he murmured into her hair. "I can't imagine what my people are feeling, separated from their loved ones. I’ll move heaven and earth to make sure they’re reunited."

  Catia stood on her tiptoes and kissed him gently on the cheek. "I know you will, that's why I love you."

  "Look at that!” Desmond blurted, disgusted by what he saw in his yard. “Now that stupid food truck’s stuck out there. I can see the mud flying from here…I swear…those agents are tearing up my lawn on purpose."

  Catia laughed. "And these are the people that we trust with our national security?" She shook her head, long chocolate brown tresses swishing over her shoulders.

  "If I didn't know that they’d arrest Teddy on sight, I'd send him out with a squad just to help them get that damn truck out of our yard…"

  "Mr. Martin?" a male voice boomed from the hidden speakers in the ceiling.

  "I hate it when they do that," Catia murmured, crossing her arms again and glaring at the ceiling.

  Desmond took a half step away from his wife and assumed the mantle of The CEO. "Go ahead," he said in a clear, calm voice.

  "Dr. Mapp is calling for you, sir. Shall I patch him through?”

  Desmond clasped his hands behind his back and relaxed, staring out the window and frowning at the antics of the goon squad from Washington. "By all means. Let's hear what he has to say."

  “Ah, Mr. Martin,” the British scientist said without introduction. "I believe I'm on to something.”

  "What’ve you got?"

  "Not…not all that much, I'm afraid," he said, ultimately. "But it is something. That's quite a lot more than we had yesterday."

  "Alright, lay it on me," Desmond replied.

  Mapp hesitated. “I-I’m—well, you see—I’m not entirely sure that’s the best course of action. I really must insist you see this personally."