Alpha

by Greg Rucka

  He loses the rest as someone demands to know why the hell this line isn’t moving. Steps back, watches Dana and this other woman continuing northeast now, along one of the main walkways that feed into Wild World. Then they’re swallowed by the crowds that seem to ebb and flow like tides on the way to the Euro Strasse.

  He checks his watch. He’s burned three minutes, almost four.

  It takes another two and a half to get across Wilson Town, to cross Town Square from the northeast to the southwest. He’s jostled and cursed at, and he can’t run, because first, there’s not enough room, and second, running would draw attention, especially running against the prevailing foot traffic. So he’s weaving, moving as quickly as he can, until he reaches the entrance to the Olde Tyme Arcade, just north of the Sheriff’s Office. Inside, he can see the place is perhaps half full, mostly young men and boys playing at pinball machines and refurbished video game cabinets. He turns, casting an eye at the front of the Sheriff’s Office, then back to the square.

  He pulls out the cell phone, not his personal phone, but rather the one from the duffel, and switches it on, waits for it to find a signal. When the clock syncs, he can see that he is in the right place, at the right time. Gabriel works the keys, bringing up the first of four designated calling groups. With one press, he can send multiple calls, a feature designed, he assumes, for conference calling or mass texting, but now repurposed, albeit slightly. He has four groups, north, south, east, and west, and to do this properly, he has to know the wind.

  He licks his lips, closes his eyes. Turns slowly, trying to feel the breeze, if there even is a breeze. He feels the skin on his lips tighten, the moisture evaporating. He opens his eyes once more, and finds himself facing north-northeast. Bunting and banners, WilsonVille flags sway slightly, confirming the wind, barely felt, coming in from the Pacific, entering the park from the west.

  Thumb on the button, Gabriel Fuller brings the phone to his ear, pretending to listen as he calls group four. He hears the ring in his ear, then abrupt silence, as each phone answers and instantly commits suicide. Holds it for a second longer before hanging up, turning toward the arcade once more. Groups one and three will need to be next, and they’ll need to go off in quick succession for maximum effect.

  It took six weeks to place each device, each carefully wrapped bundle of powder, phone, and charge. Brought into the park a little at a time, hidden on his person or in his backpack, and the phones he didn’t even bother to hide at all. So he was carrying two cell phones, big deal, and nobody even noticed, nobody ever commented.

  Now he’s moving up the west side of Town Square, passing the carnival games, the ringtoss, the baseball throw. There’s a soda vendor at the corner, and he buys himself an overpriced bottle of water, doesn’t bother trying to get his employee discount. He looks southward, watching the entrance to the Sheriff’s Office. Presses the button on the phone, dialing group one, then just as quickly hangs up and dials group three.

  For almost four minutes, there is no activity from those doors. Nothing at all.

  Then they are opening, now a flood of navy-blue blazers emerges, radios in hands, and Gabriel can tell just by the way they’re moving that they’re scared. They scatter in all directions, some of them pushing through the crowd for the main gates, some heading in his direction, then past him, going deeper into the park. And one, a middle-aged black woman, heavyset and urgent, heading his way, and he can hear what she’s saying to the people all around him as she moves. She’s waving for attention, pointing toward the south.

  The music in the square stops, followed by the crackle and shriek of hundreds of hidden speakers switching to PA. It gets attention, calls for silence, and there is just an instant, then, when WilsonVille seems to freeze, only the sound of the rides still running filling the gap. Gabriel checks the phone in his hand, bringing up group two, the last half dozen charges. Thumb poised over the SEND button.

  Your attention, please.

  A man’s voice, and Gabriel thinks that he’s hearing the strain in it, the stress, and he can’t stop himself from smiling.

  Your attention, please. This is Eric Porter, director of park and resort safety. With regret, we announce that due to unforeseen difficulties, WilsonVille will be closing for the day, effective immediately. Friends will help you make your way to the nearest exit. Please follow their directions in a calm and orderly fashion. We apologize for the inconvenience…

  Gabriel Fuller doesn’t bother looking down at the phone in his hand. He just presses the SEND button one last time. Eric Porter is still speaking, repeating the announcement, and behind him he hears another voice over the speakers, and he can’t hear the words, but he recognizes the tone, the anxiety in it, and it gives him a strange, wonderful sense of satisfaction and power.

  He’s not the only one who’s heard it, either. All around him, people are beginning to react, some still listening, others already in motion, and some are trying to be calm, some are trying to be orderly. But not all of them, not the ones who are thinking that the way they came in is the quickest way to get out, and voices are starting to rise and still Eric Porter is on the PA, and Gabriel thinks that he can hear that strain in his voice even more now.

  The man never uses the words “evacuation” or “emergency” or anything that might cause a panic.

  He never, ever says the words, “toxin” or “gas” or anything like that.

  Gabriel Fuller doesn’t say those words, either, despite the momentary, perverse pleasure the thought gives him. Like shouting “Fire!” in a crowded movie house or “Bomb!” in an airport security line. That is not the plan, however, that is not what the Uzbek is counting on him to do, and the thought of what the wrong word could now cause has him thinking of Dana again. Dana, who should be at their apartment, taking the day off, and not here because she can interpret for the deaf.

  He doesn’t want anything to happen to her. It would kill him if something happened to her, he realizes. So a calm, orderly evacuation, and by the time the authorities know what’s really going on, Dana and everyone else will be outside the gates, and they’ll be safe. Then all he’ll have to do is get through the rest of this day. Get through this day and into the night and he’ll disappear for a few days after that, and then he’ll make his way back, back to her.

  Now he’s being carried along in the press of people, and they’ve passed the Sheriff’s Office, coming up on the WilsonVille Store, so many people, and they’re being herded, so tightly together. He almost misses his chance, fakes stumbling, rights himself, allows himself to be turned around. Stumbles again, and then he’s through the door of the store, and just as he knew it would be, it’s already empty, already cleared. Racks and racks of official WilsonVille Wear, and he drops low, out of the sight line of the windows, but more important, out of the sight line of the cameras watching the store.

  Belly-crawling his way to the main bank of registers, a broken circle of counter smack in the middle of the room, pushing his duffel ahead of him as he goes. He takes it slow. With the evacuation running, he can’t imagine that anyone who’s still watching the video monitors in the command post is paying attention to the interior of any store, let alone this one. Still, he keeps his movements deliberate and controlled, for fear of catching anyone’s eye.

  The cabinets beneath the register are locked, and Gabriel has to go into his pocket, comes back with his knife. It’s a horrible thing to do to a blade, a disrespectful way to treat it, but it’s the only tool he has. He snaps it out and forces it into the gap, working it up and down until he hits the latch. It’s a tight fit, and he slams his palm into the base of the handle, and wood splinters as metal is forced into the gap. He twists, wrenches, thinking the knife is going to snap. There’s a crack as the lock gives way.

  He stows the blade, opens the now-broken doors. There’s the squat tower for the computer that runs the register, still powered. A snarl of cables running from it, and then, beside it, the blinking green lights of the
router. He pulls it free, turns it in his hands, and God bless WilsonVille Technical Services, because each port is clearly labeled with a small white printed sticker. There are two marked VIDEO, and he pulls the cords from each, turns the cameras watching the interior of the store blind.

  He replaces the router, tries to get the doors to close again as best he can, then is into the duffel, now removing the carefully folded Tyvek suit, the gas mask. He’s breathing quickly, heart racing, hearing the voices outside as he changes, and then, just sitting there, back to the counter, gas mask in his lap.

  He just wants this to be over. He just wants to get through this. Then he’ll have done what the Uzbek wanted, what the Shadow Man has required, and he can make his way back to Dana, and never leave her again.

  He can make his way back to Dana, and be Gabriel Fuller for the rest of his life.

  If he can just get through this day.

  Chapter Ten

  BELL HAS just signed the authorization allowing time and a half for Dana Kincaid, the ASL interpreter he’s brought in for Athena and Amy and Howe and the rest, when Nuri shoves his office door open. There’s no knock, and he looks up and sees it in her eyes, and before she’s finished speaking he’s out of the chair and moving, feeling the dread bursting in him like exploding glass.

  “The Spartan,” Nuri says, backing up as he approaches, then pivoting, falling into step. “Alarm just spiked in the southwest of the park, near Terra Space.”

  “Bio or chem?”

  “It’s reading botulinum.”

  A cold fear latches onto Bell’s back, begins trying to claw its way into his chest. “Got to be a false positive.”

  “And just wouldn’t that be nice? Struss is running a diagnostic now, but we don’t know how long it’s going to take.”

  “What’s the wind?”

  “Blowing from the south-southwest, about three knots.”

  “Botulinum?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice is flat, the doubt and the concern canceling one another out, Bell imagines.

  They’re coming down the stairs, now, from the third floor to the command post on the second, and Bell is taking them two, three at a time. Nuri, a handbreadth shorter but long-legged, nonetheless struggles to keep up. Bell runs the numbers in his head, three knots an hour, 156 acres, converts to metric, says, “Little over eight minutes before it covers the park.”

  “Closer to seven, if we assume even distribution, constant wind speed, which we can’t. But we’re talking about an unknown, it could be less, could be more.”

  Nuri leans ahead of him, shoves the door open into the second-floor command post. Heads turn, and Bell can see the fear, hear the silence of the room as he moves to the air monitoring station, where a middle-aged Norman Struss is working a shift that’s on the verge of turning into a nightmare. Bell ignores the man, feels eyes on him, Nuri’s among them, as he stares at the monitor. The Spartan’s screen lists chem and bio agents in columns, has its own section for radiation, and it’s flickering through readings as though it were flipping through a slide show. Then it settles, displaying an image much like an EKG, with multiple color-coded lines running across a horizontal axis. Negative anthrax, negative sarin, negative cyanogen, negative radiation, negative, negative, negative, negative.

  Except this one, this line that is flexing and spiking and pulsing in bright red, marked BOTULINUM. A callout, recording estimated concentration per sample taken. Lethality is measured by median lethal dose, or LD50, the amount of any given agent that will kill 50 percent of a population exposed to it. Bell is thinking about botulinum, thinking about context, remembering VX nerve agent. A lethality of roughly thirty micrograms to one kilogram of human being, or, to put it another way, in aerosol form, one breath of it delivers enough toxin to kill 150 people.

  That’s VX, Bell remembers.

  But botulinum toxin, appropriately weaponized, has a theoretical LD50 of three nanograms per kilogram. That’s a thousand times more lethal. This is the same stuff that Aum Shinrikyo tried to manufacture before giving up on it and switching to sarin when they attacked the Tokyo subway system. They gave up on it because they could never get the vector to work properly.

  A problem somebody else seems to have solved.

  It’s not an instant death. Symptoms on average begin to present at six hours to two days after exposure, but there have been cases of incubation within two to three hours, and within as long as four days. Unlike VX or sarin, which cause seizure and paralysis, botulinum causes muscle atrophy, loss of control, and, inevitably, respiratory failure. Victims suffocate, their diaphragms literally unable to work their lungs.

  Bell doesn’t know how many people are in the park today. He doesn’t know how many people are at Disneyland, or Knott’s Berry Farm, or even how many live in Irvine and its environs. But he’s pretty damn sure that if the Spartan II is reading botulinum and if it’s telling the truth, then there’s more than enough traveling in the air to spread far and wide beyond the confines of WilsonVille.

  Nuri has the phone ready, hands it to him as he reaches out, then puts an extension to her own ear. Bell doesn’t look away, staring at that monitor. The Spartan II that he just doesn’t trust. The Spartan II that maybe is lying to him, but is maybe telling him the truth, and he has to push, and push hard, to keep the thoughts of Amy and Athena from overwhelming his reason. Nuri at his elbow, and she’s watching him carefully, and he shakes his head just barely.

  Marcelin’s voice on the line now. “Jad? What’s going on?”

  “Waiting on Porter,” Bell says.

  “I’m here. We’ve got alarms relaying through the office, I was just about to—”

  “The Spartan tripped for airborne botulinum, now at forty-three micrograms per sample.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Marcelin says.

  “We’ve got a diagnostic running, but it’s going to be”—Bell looks at Norman Struss, who holds up his left hand, shows him five fingers, then five fingers again, then five fingers a third time—“fifteen minutes before it’s completed, before we know whether it’s a system fault or not.”

  There’s a fraction’s pause, both men at the ends of the lines absorbing, digesting. Marcelin speaks before Porter, his voice controlled. “Could it be a false positive?”

  “No way to tell at the moment.”

  “It doesn’t fit the profile,” Porter mutters, speaking more to himself than to them. “It doesn’t fit their profile, you can’t just weaponize botulinum, it’s not something you can do in a high-school chem lab, it’s not in their profile.”

  On the monitor, the pulsing line jumps, the machine bleats again, repeatedly. Norman Struss taps keys quickly, silencing the Spartan. “New readings, now central north side, from Fort Royal to the coaster. It’s spreading. Jesus, it’s spreading.”

  “You guys hear that?”

  “It doesn’t make sense. If this is retribution, they’d take a suicide run at the gates, blow themselves and take whoever they can with them, go out like true believers shouting it to the clouds. Run a truck loaded with ANFO into the parking lot, that’s the profile. This doesn’t make sense!”

  “How long will it take to evacuate the park?” Marcelin asks.

  Bell looks to Nuri, about to ask her, sees that she’s been writing on a piece of paper. She holds it up before he can ask the number: 49K AS OF 1030H.

  “We’re over forty-nine thousand,” Bell says into the phone. “Best case, we can clear the park in twenty minutes. That’s best case, Matt. And I’d want to second-sweep for stragglers.”

  “Shut it down, evacuate the park,” Porter says. “Jesus Christ, shut it down now, Matthew!”

  “Jad?”

  Bell is still staring at the monitor. His head believes what he’s seeing, but he can feel it in his gut, there’s something not right about this. Something about the way the sensors are tripping, the way the toxin seems to be spreading, but he can’t articulate it, can’t find words to fit the feeling.

 
“You’re going to have to intake, treat, nearly fifty thousand people,” Bell says, the image, unbidden and imagined, Athena lying on a gurney, pumped full of antitoxin, unable to even gasp for breath behind a bag valve mask. “You’re talking about men, women, children, the elderly, all the staff—”

  “You want to take that chance?” Porter is quietly ferocious. “You’re thinking about WilsonVille, I’m thinking about Southern fucking California. This shit doesn’t care where the park ends, Bell!”

  “If that’s what it is.”

  “What else can it be?” Marcelin asks.

  “You want to take the chance it’s a false positive? You want to take that chance? Because I sure as hell won’t.”

  “I agree,” says Bell. “Doesn’t matter, Eric’s right. We have to clear the park.”

  “Do it,” Marcelin says, and there’s no hesitation or doubt in his tone.

  Immediately, over the line, Bell can hear Porter shouting for Wallford. Send up the balloon, local, state, federal, call them all, we’ve got a biotoxin event originating in the WilsonVille theme park.

  Marcelin continues, “Eric, get on the PA, make the announcement. Jad, get my park empty and then get yourself and your people out of there.”

  “On it.”

  “Make it happen.”

  Bell hangs up his phone, sees again all the faces watching him, this room of twenty-odd people, twenty-odd Friends. All of them, plus one, a new addition, and everyone feels it, wondering if it’s already seeping into their lungs. Wondering how much time they have. Nuri is at the duty officer’s desk, has the big blue binder out, and nobody else is moving, waiting for him, waiting to hear it. He knows what he says now matters, and he hopes to God he can get it right.

  “We are evacuating the park,” Bell says. “We are evacuating the park. Hear me, hear what I’m saying. You know what I know. You know what it might be. What it might be, not what it is.”