by Justin Bell
Priscilla stopped, the breath catching in her lungs, her muscles suddenly rigid and firm, like coiled rubber.
“No,” she hissed.
Lisa looked up. “Who?”
But she knew who. Even before he spoke, even before he stepped into the front hallway and let himself be revealed by the pale white light of the library, she knew.
Mayor Harris sneered at them both, the pistol held tight in his right hand, and he lifted it, pointing it at them both.
“I didn’t want it to end this way,” he said softly. “We were all supposed to work together. To be on the same side.”
“We can be,” Priscilla said.
He glared at her. “You’re not even a part of this,” he hissed. “You’re not even from this town. What I was doing, I was doing to keep people like you out.”
“Mayor, please,” Lisa said. “It’s not too late to make this right.”
Harris drew in a deep breath. “Have you seen what’s happening out there? Explosions. Gunfire. Corpses, Lisa. There are dead bodies in my streets. How do you make that right?”
“There are dead bodies in all of the streets right now,” Lisa replied. “This thing that happened… it’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. We’re just left to pick up the pieces. We’ve all lost people, Mayor, we will all probably lose more.”
Harris remained standing, looking at the two women, an uncertain look shifting over his face like a sheer, semi-transparent curtain.
“It’s your children, isn’t it?” Lisa asked quietly. “Is that what’s doing this to you? Tommy? Julia? Are they okay, Mayor Harris?”
Lisa thought speaking his children’s names might get a warm response, an emotional reaction from the man, some sliver of his humanity peeking through.
Instead, his arm drew rigid at his side, hardening like a wet, twisted towel, fingers clamping around the handle of the pistol. His face had been softening somewhat, but now it firmed and hardened, like the air being sucked out of a basketball, face contorting in a scrunched scowl of rage.
“Don’t say their names,” he hissed. “They’re trying to sleep. You’ll wake them.”
“Bruce,” Lisa whispered. “Don’t do this.”
“Shut up,” he replied. “Don’t speak another word to me.”
Lisa saw it flash in the whites of his eyes, the hard edge of insanity, something that had been skating around the perimeter of his actions over the past few days, a sense of loss and finality that he had not yet embraced, had not been willing to accept, and as she spoke his son and his daughter’s name, she saw that edge cut through the narrow layer of sanity and tear it. There was no coming back.
His hand twitched, the one with the pistol, but Lisa acted first. She swung her own pistol up and level, clamping her second hand around it, just moments before his own was drawn. Drawing a breath, she held it and pulled the trigger.
It clicked on emptiness.
Her lips quivered and Bruce Harris fired his weapon, a shrill bark of anger, a white hot flash, and Lisa shouted abruptly before the horse kicked her in the chest and sent her sprawling back, her chest and back hot with fire.
***
“Oh my God oh my God!” Priscilla screamed, charging past Harris, knocking him aside and running full speed as he tried to bring his pistol around toward her. It fired again, splinters shattering just left of her head as she plunged through the doorway and down the stairs, half running, half stumbling, barely keeping her balance.
“Stop!” screamed Harris, his voice loud and brittle, a shattering glass. Twisting, he fired again, and the next shot went wide right, punching into the sidewalk, knocking chunks up into the air as she veered left.
The mayor growled and leaped forward, taking the steps two at a time, running at full tilt, hitting the sidewalk, turning left and barreling after the retreating form of the doctor, whose legs and arms pumped rapidly as she ran.
“I said stop!” he screamed, catapulting himself into the air, crashing into Priscilla from behind, the full weight of him striking her and knocking her forward, both of them hitting the sidewalk in a tangle of arms, legs, muscle and bone. She cried out as his weight slammed down on her, pinning her against the unforgiving surface of the sidewalk, compressing her hips and ribs and sending pain racing through her. She threw an elbow back wildly, crunching the bridge of Harris’s nose and he shouted, drawing back.
“Do I need to take the nightstick to you again?” He shouted, pushing forward, pinning her shoulders to the ground, but Priscilla drilled up her right knee, driving it into his left hip and he grunted, shifting away from her briefly.
“Get your hands off me!” she shouted. “You’re not so tough without your stick!”
Harris growled, curling his fingers in the loose fabric of Priscilla’s jacket, and he lifted her for a moment, then slammed her back down hard on the sidewalk.
“I don’t need a nightstick,” he hissed.
Priscilla tensed, waiting for the next attack, as Harris coiled back to strike again. The sudden movement took them both by surprise, a hurtling, shadowed figure charging from the direction of Main Street. Harris barely saw it before it was on top of him, leaping forward, slamming into him headlong, and knocking him back, sprawling across the sidewalk, legs buckling and arms flailing. Priscilla rolled over, immediately skidding backwards, pushing herself in reverse on the sidewalk to get some space.
Jackson Block whirled around to face her, his eyes wide and lips parted into an expression of concern.
“Priscilla! Are you okay? Did he hurt you again?”
“Fine,” she stammered, “I’m fine.”
Harris lunged, swinging a fist and driving it into Jackson’s temple, sending starbursts of light cascading through the darkness of his mind. His head snapped back, but he recovered, swinging a counter punch, driving his fist into the ribs of Harris who was adjusting his position, trying to rise.
Harris grunted and rolled over, but still managed to scratch and claw to his feet, coming up into a half crouching stance as Jackson made his way to a partial standing position as well.
“Jackson Block, is that you?” Mayor Harris asked through his crooked sneer.
Jackson breathed heavy, glaring at him, nodding softly. “Yeah. I voted for the other guy.”
Harris closed his eyes and chuckled softly at the absurdity of it all. A short time ago, he was the leader of a small, but tight-knit community, neighbors helping neighbors, a first name basis with his entire constituency. Now, he was in a fist fight on Main Street with Jackson Block, the kid who had ditched their town for Boston, thinking he was heading for better things.
“How’d Boston treat you?” Harris asked. “Came crawling back I see?”
“I heard the leadership around here has gone down the toilet. Figured maybe I should come help straighten it out.”
“You always were a snot-nosed little piece of—”
Jackson lunged at him, taking a whipping horizontal cross which seared just above a crouching Harris’s head. Harris moved into his rotation and drove a clenched fist deep into his ribs, then raked an uppercut into the soft underside of his chin. Jackson went stumbling backwards.
“You think you’re the only one who took Krav Maga classes at the dojo down the street, tough guy?” Harris moved in, following up with another volley of punches. Jackson dodged, weaved and blocked, moving in to return his own share. Harris parried a blow, then moved in rotating his hip into an arcing round kick, slamming his knee into Jackson’s left thigh, striking the sciatic nerve and sending a cascade of pins and needles down throughout his right leg. It buckled and he started to fall, then the mayor moved forward again, kicking, striking him in the chest and knocking him back onto the ground. Jackson fell from the sidewalk, into the Main Street gutter, a thin splash of drain water spraying around him.
Priscilla yelled and dashed in toward Harris, but the mayor was ready and turned on her, extending his arms and pushing her backwards. She stumbled and crashed into the sid
e of a car, clutching at her ribs as she fell. In the background the soft rattle of continued gunfire echoed as the sun drew down the horizon, making way for the encroaching darkness. It was a feeling that mirrored Harris’s sanity, a bright spark of awareness slowly consumed by the darkening clouds of confusion and chaos, his inner self at war.
He leaped at Jackson, but Jackson moved his legs, scissoring them and catching his ankles, sending the mayor spilling over to the right onto the sidewalk, his arms waving wide. He hit hard and his breath exploded from his lungs with such force it left him somewhat dizzy as he tried to recover from the sudden impact of ribs on asphalt. Jackson scrambled to his feet, his backpack still awkward against his back, the shifting weight throwing him off as he tried to move. Harris was already climbing to his feet, and his arm was moving in a strange position, coming up and around, and Jackson twisted, looking at his hand.
He saw it then, the dull shape in the faint light of dusk, the gun metal gray of the semi-automatic, the pistol that had been on the sidewalk, but was now in the mayor’s hand directed toward him.
“Watch out!” Priscilla screamed. “He already shot Lisa with it!”
The world around Jackson slammed to a sudden, screeching halt, his eyes widening and the motion of his evasion halting immediately, freezing him in a strange, uncertain combat stance.
“What?” he demanded. His eyes flashed from Priscilla to Harris, then back again. “Lisa? She’s been shot?”
“She gave me no choice,” Harris snarled. “I didn’t want to do it.” He aimed the pistol at Jackson. “Do you think I want this? Any of this? What my town has become? This isn’t the way this was supposed to be.”
Jackson raised his hands, bent at the elbows. “Easy, Mayor Harris, okay?” he said softly. “Nobody has to die tonight.”
“Too late,” Harris mumbled. “Too, too late. It’s all gone. Everything is gone.”
“That’s not true,” Jackson replied. “We can fix this. Together, we can fix all of this.”
Harris darted a narrow glance at him, his lips parting into a snarl. “No. No we can’t. It’s not just Aldrich, it’s the world that’s broken. It was stupid of me to think I could save this rotten town. The sickness has infected Aldrich, too, and it’s not just this stupid flu, it’s the sickness of entitlement. Of thinking you’re owed something. That you are more important than the community. I tried to change it, but it’s a lost cause. I couldn’t fix Lisa, and I can’t fix you.”
“Mayor, please,” Jackson reasoned. “Bruce. Let me go see her. She may be okay. Maybe we can save her, we can turn this around.”
Harris merely shook his head and lifted the pistol, extending his arm. “No. It ends now.”
The pistol roared.
Chapter 11
He didn’t think, he just acted. Let his mind fade out and his body take control. As the pistol kicked and fired, Jackson shifted right, ignoring the wet tearing pain in his left side, moving his hands, twisting his waist, everything whirling in a flash of bright motion, the blur catching the last remnants of sunlight on the scant curve of the sword’s blade.
Harris took an uncertain step backwards, his foot searching for purchase. It slipped off the lip of the sidewalk and he tumbled backwards, his head lilting, then spilling forward from the clean slice just under his jawline.
His body slumped one way, his head thumped onto the sidewalk and rolled comically left, his opened eyes staring wide up into the approaching dusk.
Priscilla gasped, putting one hand to her swollen mouth, the other to her stomach, and Jackson stepped toward her, sliding his sword back in its sheath in his backpack. He purposefully didn’t look down, though he favored his left side as he approached her.
“You’re shot,” she whispered. “He got you.”
“Okay,” Jackson mumbled. “I’ll be okay. Lisa. Please. Take me to Lisa.”
***
It wasn’t every day that members of Fort Detrick saw a CH-53K King Stallion and as the large aircraft made its way back toward the landing pad, rotors whacking in the dim light of oncoming evening, a small crowd ringed around the helipad to welcome them home. Wind beat down around them, a furious helicopter supplied downdraft that struck at their heads and hands, keeping them crouched low, hands shielding their eyes as the massive beast completed its slow, persistent descent toward the ground.
Colonel Reeves led the charge, jogging toward the opening cargo hold door as figures appeared from within, walking slow, and weary, exhausted from the short but stressful retrieval operation.
“We’ve been trying to get you on comms for hours,” said Reeves. “What’s the status? Did you get it?”
Agent Craig let his backpack slip from his arm as he slowly limped down the metal ramp, holding it out to Lieutenant Burns as she approached.
“Hard drives are in there,” he said quietly. “Get them to Agents Wakefield and Bryce. They should have access to some NSA tools or personnel to try and help crack the encryption.”
Reeves turned toward her. “You stay with them the whole time, Lieutenant, do you understand?”
Burns nodded vigorously, taking the backpack and peeling away, heading back to the compound.
“No need for that,” Davis said to Reeves as he came down the ramp himself.
“No need for what?” Reeves asked.
“This agency versus military pissing match,” Davis replied. “Craig did good out there. Real good. We’re all on the same side here, okay?”
Davis joined Reeves while the rest of the Marine crew disembarked, speaking to some other staff members who hung back.
“You’re going to have to convince me we’re all on the same side here, Sergeant,” Reeves said. “There are a lot of things pointing to this being some kind of intelligence black operation that went totally sideways.”
“With all due respect, Colonel, that’s ridiculous. Our visit to Philadelphia was illuminating in more ways than one.”
The two men walked toward Fort Detrick, but they were walking slowly, giving them some time to speak.
“Explain,” Reeves asked.
Davis nodded. “There was an intercept team there. At the data center.”
“How is that even possible?” Reeves asked. “How did they know you were coming?”
“I’m not sure they did,” Davis replied. “I think they were there themselves, or at least heading there. They saw the King Stallion and decided to make a kill mission out of it.”
“But why were they going there?”
“You want my guess?” Davis asked.
The two men stopped out on the lawn, the darkened form of Fort Detrick rising up behind them like a watchful giant.
“Yes, I do,” Reeves replied.
“The reason why U.S. intelligence knew so much about that data center in Philly was because they use it, too. Our own offsite replication passes through the systems in that place just like those big department store chains.”
“So you think this intercept team was there to retrieve that for someone?”
“No. I think they were covering their tracks.”
Reeves narrowed his glare. “I’m not following.”
“I know. It’s a long story.”
“I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours,” Reeves replied. “What’s another ten or twelve, huh?”
Davis nodded. “So, I know you’re aware of this Leonard Graybar situation, right? The NSA spook who was under investigation for illegal communications?”
Reeves nodded.
“We were checking him out, over at Team Ten, mostly because of his connections to the CDC. We found evidence that his home network had been compromised by a foreign state.”
Reeves didn’t reply, he just stood there with his arms crossed.
“See, Graybar was working on this top secret operation with the CDC. A revolutionary way to develop an artificially intelligent vaccine. An antibiotic. A heuristic genetic compound that would be able to examine and evaluate potential biological agents and
fight them back. It was good work. Quality work. They were planning a field test in South Boston.”
“But something went wrong?”
“Yes and no.”
Reeves made a gesture, asking Davis to continue.
“This foreign state spent months gathering this evidence through illegal backdoor trojan’s on Graybar’s computer, which they also leveraged into illegal wiretaps. They had the whole ball of wax, and they were able to take some of this next generation science and reverse engineer it into a weapon. A bacterial weapon, where the bacteria itself is actually infected with a genetically engineered virus, and that virus is what detonates the payload. This bacteria and virus are engineered to only attack a specific genetic pattern.”
“The ethnic bioweapon?”
Davis nodded. “An ethnic bioweapon.”
“So who was the target?”
“We all were, Colonel. The entire United States of America.”
Reeves’s mouth dropped open.
“I believe this foreign state has a sleeper cell within the United States border, and they’ve had it here for a very long time. I think their plan was to unleash this biological weapon, which would theoretically ravage the majority of the American population, leaving the nation ripe for further attacks and potential hostile takeover. It would appear that we may have run into one arm of his sleeper cell in Philadelphia.”
Colonel Reeves shook his head, turning away from Davis for a moment.
“The men who attacked us, they were speaking a different language. I couldn’t tell what it was for most of the conflict, but near the end, I heard snatches of what sounded like Chechnyan. They were using Kalashnikovs which as we all know are Russian weapons and readily available in that part of the world.”
“There’s no way Chechnya has the capacity to do what you’re claiming,” Reeves replied.