by Nick Thacker
Government, he thought. One of the women walked toward him. Slim, fit, and wearing a tight suit that matched her demeanor, she seemed tightly wound and looked like the kind of person who took herself too seriously.
When the woman didn’t deviate from her course, Ben almost groaned aloud.
The words left her mouth before she’d even stopped moving. “May I ask you a few questions?”
Ben didn’t respond. He glanced at her quickly, top to bottom, and aimed his eyes at the only window on this side of the building.
“Mr. Bennett, correct? Harvey Bennett?” she asked.
Again, he didn’t answer.
“People usually call you Ben, though, right?”
He frowned.
“Mr. Bennett, you’re a ranger here at Yellowstone? You’ve worked here for thirteen years, correct? First as an intern of sorts, then of course moving into your current role.” Ben knew she was no longer asking questions, but merely verifying the information some subordinate had given her. “You were nineteen, moved your life up here, and now live in a trailer just outside the park’s perimeter. May I ask what you were running away from?”
Ben clenched his jaw and continued to stare out the window.
“Later, then. What about Rivera? Mr. Carlos Rivera, twenty-three years old, from Albuquerque, New Mexico. How long had you worked with him?” The woman’s emphasis on the word “had” was not lost on Ben.
“Are you going to ask any questions you don’t already know the answer to?” he shot back.
The woman hesitated, then nodded once. “Fair enough. Mr. Bennett, can you talk about what you saw up there this morning? The explosion?”
Ben thought for a moment. “Looked like a bomb. Mushroom cloud and everything.”
“Right. And what reaction did you and Mr. Rivera have when you noticed it?”
“We didn’t have time to react to it — there was an earthquake, and then...” Ben didn’t finish the thought, but the woman in front of him didn’t push it. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m with the Centers for Disease Control, BTR Division, local out of Billings, Montana.”
Ben stood up from the couch. “Listen, uh, CDC… BTR… whatever, lady,” he said as he walked past her. “I’ve answered questions now for almost an hour. If you want more information, just read the reports.” He walked through the gathering of people, heading for the door. He pushed it open and stepped down onto the patio, not looking back.
As he left the patio, he heard the outer screen door slam closed, then creak back open again. He sighed as footsteps quickly pounded over the patio and down the steps. Within seconds, the woman was next to him. He didn’t slow down.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bennett, I know you’ve had a rough morning, but —”
“A rough morning?” Ben stopped and wheeled around to face her. “A rough morning is what Rivera’s family is having. A rough morning is what the families of the — what, one hundred or so — people who were killed in that explosion are having. I’m just trying to have a morning, but it’s apparently not going to be possible.”
“I — I know, Mr. Bennett, I just —”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Okay, Ben, I just need to ask you some —”
“Right, I get it. You and everyone else need to ask a bunch of questions, hoping that someone here knows something different than what you’ve already figured out. A bomb went off and a lot of people died. It caused an earthquake, opening a fissure in the ground that Rivera fell into. What else do you need from me?”
The woman stopped, letting Ben gain distance from her, and spoke to the back of his head. “I just want to know exactly what happened.”
Ben sucked in a deep breath and turned to face her. “I tried to save him, okay? I had his arm, and he fell. What? You think I’m a suspect in a murder investigation or something?”
She paused, then lowered her voice. “No, I don’t, Ben. But my boss isn’t the kind of man who will just let things be. He’s going to ask some questions — some very specific questions — and I need to be able to answer them to his satisfaction. I just want to get back to Montana, back home.”
Ben kicked at a stone at his feet, then met the woman’s eyes again. “Where exactly is home?”
“Outside Billings, small town called Lockwood.”
He thought for a moment. “You do me a favor, uh —”
“Julie. Juliette Richardson.”
“Right. Can you do me a favor, Julie?”
She waited.
“Can you make sure I don’t have to talk to anyone else about this mess? I’ll tell you what I know; what happened, and that’s all I can do. But I don’t want to screw around with the other government types like you or anyone else. Fair?”
She smiled. “I think I can work that out.
Chapter Seven
THE CLUB CONNECTED WITH THE ball directly in the “sweet spot.” Josh Hohn watched it sail down the fairway, breaking left before landing and following the contour of the long par 5, as if the ball had been guided remotely. Josh smiled, knowing exactly what his boss, Francis Valère, would say.
He heard the older man standing behind him mutter a French curse word under his breath. “Must be that nice piece you are using.”
The TaylorMade SLDR driver was a gift from Valère, and the man tried as hard as possible to make Josh feel bad about it.
“Well, you picked it, old man.” Josh turned and winked at him.
Francis Valère grabbed a driver from his golf bag strapped to the back of their cart and marched up to the tee. Placing his ball carefully upon a bright pink tee, he took a few practice swings before launching the ball down the fairway. He watched it rise and get caught in a draft of wind that pushed it to the right. The ball landed close to a sand trap, bounced a few times, and came to a stop in the taller grass just before the tree line.
Josh laughed, and Valère turned to glare at him. Josh shrugged. “Should have bought one for yourself, I guess.”
“Look who’s still trailing me by three,” the man said. Valère returned to the cart, put his club down into the bag, and slid into the driver’s seat. “Come on, that one’s going to be hard to find.”
Josh was already sitting in the cart and checking his cell phone. “Woah, you’re not going to believe this,” he said. “Looks like a bomb went off at Yellowstone earlier. You’ve got to be kidding me...”
He scrolled through an article on his smartphone, skimming the news article that he’d pulled from his feed reader. “Yeah, it seems like there was minimal damage, minimal casualties...” he paused. “Shit, I don’t mean to be morbid, but if you’re going to bomb a place, wouldn’t you choose one a little more, uh, populated?”
Valère kept driving, keeping the cart on the path that stretched along the right side of Hole 13. “Wow, that’s unbelievable.” He finally slowed the golf cart to a halt and stepped out. “You want to help me find this thing?”
Josh returned the phone to his pocket and exited the vehicle. “I can’t believe it either. What were they hoping to achieve?”
“Terror, maybe. Making a point. Could be anything these days.” He poked around with his foot, trying to find where the white Nike ball had landed. The grass was perfectly trimmed, left a little long to differentiate it from the short-cropped blades nearby. “What do you think everyone else is working on?”
Josh thought for a moment. “Who knows? Maybe they’re actually taking a vacation, like you ordered them to.”
“Right! You know them as well as I do, Hohn — they are probably hard at work curing cancer or creating the next superfood.” He stressed the word “super” with his thick French accent. Josh knew he meant it as a joke, as they’d often made fun of America’s blind obsession with “super” fruits and vegetables. He loved creating hybrid plant fungi in their lab that included an extra dosage of a vitamin or two, then trying to get Valère to market it as the “next big thing.” It was a pretty nerdy game, but both men en
gaged in the pastime when they weren’t working on other projects.
Josh knew his boss was talking about the two lab assistants who also worked for Frontier Pharmaceuticals Canada. Valère had founded Frontier Pharmaceuticals Canada only a few years ago with a massive personal investment and some venture funding from a couple of his friends. He’d hired Joshua Hohn as his right-hand man and partner, and Josh had, in turn, hired the two part-time university students to help with data and organization. Together, the two men had spent the last three years finalizing a very real “super” drug — an organic shell that could be placed around the cell walls of microscopic organisms that acted as a sort of flexible and semi-permeable “armor.”
It was fascinating to Josh, to conceive of a lab-created chemical bonding molecule that actually fused to a cell’s outer wall and added an extra layer of protection. It would revolutionize the pharmaceutical world, and likely science in general. The world of nanotechnology was almost upon them, and Josh knew his career would be solidified if they were successful.
And they had been. It happened last week, at the end of a long stretch of over twenty hours in “The Dungeon,” the nickname they had given their dark, cluttered workspace. Josh had called Valère frantically, almost tripping over his words as the test results poured in.
The nanocoating they’d applied had finally done what it was supposed to do — it stuck.
“I don’t know, those two seem to be more interested in frat parties and coeds than doing actual science,” Josh said. “They’re probably in South Padre or Miami, drinking piña coladas and talking up some poor girl.”
Valère finally found his ball near a tree stump that was lined up perfectly between himself and the hole. He cursed again, grabbing a pitching wedge from his bag.
“Going up and over?” Josh asked, clearly surprised.
“I do not have it in me to waste three shots and let you catch up.” He took a few practice swings and set into his swing ritual.
The shot was beautiful — a perfect arc that carried the ball cleanly over the stump and straight to the middle of the fairway, mere inches from Josh’s first shot.
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t bet you that you couldn’t do it,” Josh said.
“I am not a betting man,” Valère said.
“No, you’re not, but you should be. With this product of yours, you could have been set.”
Valère turned and looked at Josh. “Rest assured, my friend, my exposure in this company is over and above anything I would wager out here with you. And do not forget, you have quite a stake in this as well.”
Josh nodded. He had signed on for a half-million-dollar salary, in Canadian dollars, and took an options contract as well. Further, he had a small percentage share in the company’s future profits.
Basically, both men were about to be rich beyond their wildest dreams.
“When I get back into the office next week, I have a call with our other two investors and patent lawyer, and from there I will make a decision about timing,” Valère said.
“What do you need me to work on, then?” Josh asked. They’d arrived at the mid-point of the hole and walked to where their balls lay in the grass. “I’m guessing we’ll need to set up some meetings with the bigger representatives and start on the marketing?”
“No, we will wait on the marketing side. First, I need to get the sample to the investors, and they will start production.”
“Production of what?” Josh asked.
“Do you remember the trip to the Northwest Territory that I took a year ago?” Valère asked.
Josh frowned, but nodded. It was an interesting and sudden change of subject.
“I visited the site of a native tribe of people who have long since perished. There, we also found the remains of a camp, and what we assumed was a Russian expedition.”
“We? I thought you went alone?”
“I met with my investors — as you know, we have been business partners for a long time.”
“So this was a business trip?” Josh asked. He was growing more and more confused.
“Of sorts, yes. Anyway, we discovered the cause of death for these poor explorers. It was an ancient plant that releases a small amount of its natural defense mechanism into the surrounding air when disturbed. The powdered form of its dried remains, I believe, was used by this native tribe as some sort of hallucinogenic substance. However, after many years of settling, that same defense mechanism turned into a lethal substance.”
“You’re talking about the sample you’ve got in the freezer, right? Those boxes that were shipped back with you?”
Valère nodded. “We wished to also use this substance as a defense mechanism, just like the plant itself. However, I needed to strengthen it; to improve its potency —”
“You created a virus?”
“I discovered one, yes. In its natural state, it was barely enough to harm a small mammal, unless it is ingested in quantity. But with a few alterations and improvements —”
“What are you talking about?” Josh was horrified. “That’s not a medical application, Francis —”
“It does not concern you what the application is,” Francis said.
Josh stepped up to his ball and slammed his club down in a reckless swing. The ball flew off the ground, leaving a dirty streak of brown in the grass. He watched, his anger building, as the ball careened to the right and over the line of trees. Without turning back around, he began walking toward the trees to find it.
How could he do this? he wondered. Josh had been working with Valère for over three years, and he thought he knew the man. They both had been interested in preserving life through their work and science.
This sounded like the exact opposite.
He crashed through the thick bushes that marked the end of the golf course and the beginning of undeveloped land, and kept walking toward a stand of pine trees he’d last seen his ball flying toward. As he neared the trees, he could hear the sound of running water.
The trees stood like sentinels in front of a steep hill, standing guard over the cliff. The hill fell away at a steep angle down to a river, where he could see water tumbling over rocks and forming small rapids as it wound through the canyon.
What he didn’t see, however, was his ball.
“I believe it landed farther up,” his boss’s voice called out from behind him. Valère had driven their cart to the edge of the course and walked to Josh.
“You can’t do this, Valère. You can’t sell us out like that. Who’s buying, anyway?”
“It is not a matter of money —”
“Bullshit!” Josh yelled. “Of course it is! Why else would you have kept this from me?”
“I told you, it is not something you should concern yourself with. This plan predates our arrangement, Josh.”
Josh watched as his boss removed Josh’s driver from his bag. He inspected it, examining the lightweight graphite build. “We have been working for a lifetime on this, and it is not something I will abandon before I am finished.”
Josh took a step backward toward the hill, a pained expression on his face. “You’re a terrorist. That’s all this is. You’re a smart, suicidal, ignorant terrorist.”
“You have your names for what I do, and I have mine. I am working on something far bigger than anything you can imagine,” Valère said. “Something much more significant.”
“You won’t get away with it,” Josh said. “You won’t be able to run from it when you’re done.”
Josh’s eyes widened as he noticed Francis raising the golf club into the air.
“I am not planning on running, Josh. I am here, and I will stay right here. And if I am removed, there will be another to take my place. And another.”
Valère turned his head slightly sideways, examining his employee and business partner as if intrigued. “It is truly a shame, Joshua.”
“What?”
Valère lashed out with the club and struck Josh in the head. There was a sicken
ing smack, and Josh immediately fell to the ground. The pain was excruciating, but Josh’s brain felt like mush. He couldn’t think straight; he couldn’t speak.
“It is a truly a shame to lose a mind such as yours, my friend. But you are wrong. I will get away with it. America is not united enough to save itself.”
He lifted the club again. Josh tried to close his eyes, to raise his arm, to do something — but couldn’t.
He could only stare as his boss bought the driver down onto his head.
Chapter Eight
BEN AND JULIE SAT TUCKED away in a back corner of the staff cafeteria that was connected to the main facilities building. He examined the peeling coat of paint on the cafeteria walls that had gone unnoticed for years. The faint smell of fryers and old food mixed with the subtle aroma of cleaning supplies. As unpleasant the overall feel of the place may have been for a newcomer, Ben felt oddly at ease in this room. He’d spent countless meals here, mostly listening to the conversations of his coworkers and supervisors as they engaged in workplace chatter.
It was the first time in perhaps ten years that he’d felt nostalgic.
Down the hall and around a corner was the same lounge area that Ben had found himself in an hour after the incident. While the majority of the police and SWAT team had gone back to their offices, a few government employees, park officials, and some stragglers were milling about the room, swapping stories.
The news broke to the local and regional stations while Ben and Julie were outside, and the national media was no doubt on its way to pick up the fragments of what was known and embellish or make up the rest.
Ben sipped a cup of black coffee, almost too hot to drink, as he waited for Julie to ask her next question.
“Did you know Rivera well?”
“Not really. If you haven’t guessed, I’m somewhat of an introvert, and I don’t make friends too quickly out here.”