by William Oday
Minutes ticked by as Mason caught the odd word here and there of Iridia and Bryce’s conversation, only when the music paused before picking back up to continue the hypnotic beat.
He looked out at a nearby skyscraper. It was all black glass, reflective where the interior lights were out and little dioramas of late night office life where the lights remained on. He could just make out a man seated at a desk in a dim office. His face illuminated by the screen in front of him. He scanned the face of the building, wondering if these people had any idea they were so visible.
His gaze paused on a pane of glass that answered the question. A man and a woman either wore skin-colored, skin-tight business suits or they were in their birthday suits. The details were difficult to make out at this distance, but they were clearly engaged in some very intimate negotiations. She was bent over a conference table, maybe reaching for a pen she dropped. He was behind her, urgently pushing her forward to find it.
Only in Los Angeles. They probably wanted people to watch.
Mason shook his head and checked his watch. A few more minutes and he’d drag Iridia to the airport if he had to. The local news station ran on one of the TVs above the bar. It replayed footage of the fires up north and FEMA trucks and personnel scurrying around like a colony of ants under attack. Or preparing for one.
He glanced back toward the bed and noticed Bryce’s hand unmistakably high on Iridia’s thigh. His fingertips just under the hem of her dress, which had already ridden up a ways from her sitting down. He said something and laughed. His hand moved higher, disappearing under the black fabric.
Iridia grabbed his arm and tried to push it away. His smile wavered and he pushed to keep his hand in place. She again tried to back him off. He frowned and shouted at her. He jerked his hand back and then laid out another ragged line of white powder. An instant later, it vanished up his nose and his head shot back like a wolf howling at the moon.
He scooted closer to Iridia and slithered an arm around her, whispered something in her ear.
She backed away.
This idiot couldn’t take a hint.
Mason edged closer. Not wanting to intrude, but wanting to be close in case he was forced to intervene.
Their words carried over the music.
“I’m not doing that to get the part. I’m a fucking Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue model!”
“Honey, did you really think I’d want you for a lead role? You’re a hot, dumb bitch. Your lead role is on my pole.”
He pointed at his crotch like it was the Holy Grail.
Iridia slapped him with a crack loud enough that people in surrounding beds looked over.
Bryce glanced around, seeing that he was the focus of unwanted attention.
“You whore! You’ll never get a part in my movie. You’ll never work in this town!”
“Fuck you, Bryce. Go force your little prick on ignorant interns who don’t know better.”
Mason smiled, happy to see she had some standards, and the strength to keep them.
The director clearly wasn’t used to being told no. “You worthless cunt!” His face contorted as his hand raised above his head.
Iridia flinched, bracing for the impact.
Mason moved in.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Just as Bryce’s hand dropped, Mason wrapped him in an arm lock and yanked him up off the bed. The director gave him a furious glare. As if he couldn’t believe a mere mortal would interfere in the affairs of deities.
After regaining his balance, Bryce squared up to Mason and swung a wild roundhouse. It was slow, poorly aimed, and laughable at best. But it crossed the line in no uncertain terms.
Mason almost grinned as he stepped into it with a vicious blow to the solar plexus. It was a hard strike. The piece of filth would be sucking wind for the next few minutes. Most importantly, it wouldn’t leave a mark. Nothing for this clown to show a jury with an accompanied demand of millions of dollars in punitive damages.
Bryce doubled over and collapsed to the ground.
He was human trash, and he deserved a proper beating. As good as it would’ve felt, Mason was working and the threat had been neutralized.
Bryce curled up on his side, gagging and coughing for air. Between ragged breaths, he screamed.
“I’ll kill you! Fucking kill you!”
Beaten and immobilized, this guy still wanted to attack. Maybe it was empty talk. But maybe it wasn’t. People could do crazy things on drugs. He’d seen it before back in Fallujah. He didn’t think the guy would come back for more, but additional certainty was a simple matter. Mason spun him around, wrenched his hands behind his back, and slapped a pair of plastic looped cuffs on his wrists. He cranked them tighter than strictly necessary because the guy deserved much worse.
Mason reached over to the bed and retrieved the clear vial filled with white powder.
Bryce stopped struggling, even as his chest heaved and rattled, grasping for air.
Mason spun the end off and tossed it at a trashcan twenty feet or so away. It sailed through the air leaving a trail of white powder, like fairy dust that could make all your nightmares come true. A gust of wind scattered the powder and it disappeared as it dissolved.
Bryce screamed like a maniac. Foam sputtered from his lips as choked words drowned in inchoate rage.
That business complete, Mason turned back to Iridia seated on the edge of the bed. Tears splashed down her cheeks, dragging dark streaks of mascara with them. He gently pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arm around her.
“I can’t believe he thought that. I’m not that kind of girl, Mason. I swear I’m not.”
“Not my business,” he said as he saw the hurt in her eyes. “But I believe you.”
He wasn’t positive he believed her, but it didn’t matter. He needed to get her out of here before this scene got bigger and more dangerous. Already they’d gathered a small crowd.
“Let’s go,” he said in her ear.
She nodded and looked down at the man she’d pinned her Hollywood hopes on.
“You sack of shit!”
She landed a hard kick to his torso before allowing herself to be dragged away.
Mason would’ve been more than happy to let her kick the stuffing out of him, but his job was to protect her. And that meant keeping her out of court as much as keeping her out of the hospital.
They hadn’t taken five steps when the music crashed to silence. The abrupt transition from overwhelming sound to near silence sent the hairs on the back of his neck tingling.
All the TVs above the bar switched to the same local station. Big, white letters scrolled across a red banner on the bottom edge of the screen—BREAKING NEWS. A reporter read from a paper in her hands. Someone clicked the volume higher.
“Details are incomplete at the moment, but we’re getting reports that Cedars-Sinai and the Ronald Reagan Medical Center are overrun with patients claiming flu-like symptoms. Neighborhood clinics are experiencing similar problems.”
She touched her ear as communication came through the earpiece monitor.
“I’m told we have a reporter on the ground at the Reagan Medical Center. Are you there, Kevin?”
An audio feed hissed and then resolved into chaotic shouting.
“Yes, I’m here, Melissa. Just outside the emergency room at the Reagan Center. Sorry, the team is working on patching through a video feed.”
“Can you tell us what is happening there?”
“No one knows, to tell you the truth. There are a lot of scared people. We spoke with—“
Horrific screams momentarily drowned out his voice.
“—urging people to remain calm.”
“We lost you there for a moment, Kevin. Can you—“
The video feed cut from the studio to a scene of barely controlled pandemonium. A young reporter with stylishly coiffed hair stood in front of the entrance to the ER at the Reagan Center.
The scene resembled nothing you ever expected to se
e in The United States of America.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
A mass of humanity swirled around the reporter. A throng of bodies jammed the entrance to the ER in the background. Many people in the crowd wore white dust masks. An ambulance with lights flashing sat abandoned by the door. The crowd flooded around it like a river around a boulder.
Husbands and wives. Mothers and fathers. Sisters and brothers. Grandmothers and grandfathers. Babies. The healthy and sick mixed together in a pack of shoving arms and screaming voices. The mass of bodies lodged in the doorway went nowhere. There was nowhere to go. A line of four police officers stood across the interior door, looking overwhelmed and about to crack. They shoved at the crowd, trying to hold their ground. The inertia from the back shoved the people in front forward.
The police fell back another step.
Kevin turned back to the camera and swept the hair out of his face. “The police are urging people to remain calm. The ER is unable to process the volume of people.”
A mother separated from the crowd and shoved up next to the reporter. She held a young girl in her arms. Looked kind of like Theresa at eight or nine. The girl’s face gleamed with a sickly sweat. Her skin shone pale white with irregular, angry red welts. Yellow pus oozed from many of the sores. Her pupils were huge, the empty black nearly swallowing the surrounding brown. The whites burned red with veins like a roadmap.
The mother held a filthy white cloth to the girl’s mouth. Dark stains showed it had been used several times. The woman clutched at the reporter’s shoulder. Her fingers white with desperate tension.
“Help my daughter! Please! She’s sick.”
The reporter froze. His mouth open and unmoving.
The girl’s chest spasmed and a dark gout of blood exploded from her mouth. A fountain of gore splashed all over the reporter’s face. The sticky liquid covered him, spilled out of his mouth. The girl continued coughing, sputtering red down her own shirt.
Her mother’s eyes cratered open. Terror. She hugged the listless girl tightly. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. You’re going to be fine.”
The reporter clawed at his eyes, flinging away viscera that stuck to his fingers. He spat on the ground.
The woman grabbed at him again, apparently still convinced this poor guy could help her. He had a TV camera pointed at him, he must be able to save the world.
“Help my baby! Please!”
The reporter recoiled, trying to pull away.
“Get away from me!”
He yanked her hand free like it was death incarnate. Maybe it was. She reached for him again.
“Don’t touch me,” he shouted while stumbling backward.
She moved closer.
“Please—”
He screamed and leveled her with a vicious shove that sent her sprawling backwards. She tripped and went down hard. Her arms wrapped tightly around her daughter, the woman had nothing to soften the blow as her head snapped back and slammed into the concrete curb.
Her body went limp as blood dampened her hair. It oozed onto the pavement under her head.
A middle-aged man parted from the crowd and knelt beside the woman. He scooped the girl into his lap and held her close, rocking her gently. The woman next to him tended to the injured mother.
“What the fuck! What the fuck!” the reporter yelled as he continued digging gore out of his eyes.
The shot cut back to the anchor in the studio. A frozen look of horror stared into the camera. A dark shadow crept in from the side of the screen. A man with a headset stepped into the pool of light and nudged the anchor’s shoulder. He laid a sheet of paper on her desk.
She blinked and slowly came to her senses. She read the paper silently and then turned back to the camera, as if suddenly remembering millions waited on the other end.
“We’ve just received a couple of emergency alerts. The Federal Aviation Administration has closed the air space over Los Angeles. No flights will be allowed in or out of the city. No traffic will be allowed in the air space itself. The FAA urges private citizens to comply with the temporary closure.”
As if on cue, a thunder from the west grew louder and then the source appeared. A squadron of four F-22 Raptors screamed overhead and disappeared in the distance.
Everyone at the rooftop bar watched them go. Mason had never seen anything like it. Not outside of Iraq.
The news anchor shuffled her papers and continued.
“The second alert is from the Mayor’s office. It instructs citizens to remain indoors until city personnel get a handle on the situation. No specific information is given, but it appears some kind of outbreak has occurred. Medical facilities are overwhelmed and turning back people with the help of local law enforcement.”
She glanced at the paper again and then back to the camera. “Above all, Mayor Garcia urges every citizen of Los Angeles to remain calm.”
A man at the bar turned away from the TV above his head and stumbled toward a trashcan in the corner. Before he made it, a fountain of vomit spilled out of his mouth, splashing the shoes of those nearby. Whether he was just a drunk who couldn’t hold his liquor or something more serious, it didn’t matter.
The thin crust of civility, the unspoken agreement society made to itself to make modern life possible, cracked and crumbled to dust.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Like a thin crust of civility had cracked and a vast subterranean insanity tore loose, the crowd of well-dressed beautiful people broke as one and rushed the elevator. One thought thundered through the herd.
Escape.
Howling screams pierced the air as several of the weaker or less steady patrons were trampled underfoot.
Mason grabbed Iridia’s arm and dashed for the same elevator, hoping to get in before the small mob packed the narrow entrance and made it so nobody could get out. A man shouldered Iridia hard to the side as he ran by. A couple of hipsters bumped Mason from the other side as he turned to steady Iridia.
A dense group rushed for the elevator, sweeping Iridia forward in their frenzied wave. Her arm yanked free and she bobbed away.
In a flash, Mason had the Bonowi baton out and locked to full extension. With measured swings, he snapped the metal rod down on the shoulders of the people separating him and Iridia. Every swing sent another body crashing to the floor, howling in pain. The calculated strikes wouldn’t break bones, but they were utterly debilitating.
The sea of people parted like Moses with the staff.
Mason made his way to Iridia and halted her forward motion.
The crowd packed closer together as everyone funneled toward the elevator. Elbows flew as people jockeyed for space, trying to push forward and through others already stacked in front.
They weren’t going to make it. He wasn’t going to wade through that mess with Iridia. He turned back and fought to move away. He wielded the baton in front like a sword, whacking bodies that pushed to bowl them over. He parted the mass of rushing flesh and finally pushed free.
There had to be an emergency exit somewhere. Stairs that could get them to the parking garage. A single elevator that could hold five or six with more than a hundred people clamoring for a spot was not a situation any CPO would willingly enter.
He pulled Iridia behind as he scanned the rooftop. No signs that he could see made it obvious. They ran back to the upper level and turned the corner toward the bathrooms. Still nothing.
Surely this place didn’t get permitted with no emergency escape.
They made it around to the bathrooms and were relieved to see a side door that led to the stairs. Not a single body crowded its entrance. Poor souls. If there really was some kind of outbreak, fighting through a mob of spitting, bleeding, drunken imbeciles wasn’t a good way to avoid infection.
Mason threw open the door and pulled Iridia inside. He looked over the guardrails and down an empty, central column of air. Far below, he saw a few people winding down the steps in a rush.
Iridia pulled back an
d fought him to a stop.
“Where are we going?”
“We’ll worry about that later. Let’s get down to the parking garage and get out of here first.”
Mason looked her up and down. She was dressed for dinner with a director. Not for escaping a hotel filled with an increasingly dangerous mob.
“Get rid of the shoes,” he said. She’d snap an ankle in those three-inch heels.
Her face screwed up in horror, as if he’d suggested she throw away her only child. She reached down and slipped out of them. She looped them on a finger.
“I’m not leaving my Manolos,” she said with a look that dared him to cross her.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
He took her hand and headed down the stairs as fast as she could follow.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
November 2004
Fallujah, Iraq
Mason approached the next house to be cleared, his M16 in the low ready position. Third squad stacked up at the closed metal door in the concrete wall that fronted the property. A big padlock secured the door shut. Houses here weren’t anything like back home in California. Here they were mini-fortresses surrounded by concrete walls six to eight feet high and a foot thick.
Mason waved to LCpl. Channing. “Channing, you’re up.”
In addition to his service rifle, Channing carried a Mossberg 500 twelve gauge shotgun. It could blast a crater in a body, and it also functioned well as a lock pick. Channing came to the front and aimed at the lock, less than a foot from the muzzle. He turned his face away and blasted the lock to bits.
Lucky had point and rushed through the open gate with his rifle up and ready to fire. It followed his eyes as he scanned the area.
“Going right.”
He turned right and disappeared inside the courtyard.
Lopes pushed in with his M249 SAW sweeping the courtyard. The light machine gun could send lead downrange at eight hundred rounds per minute. It was a monster. And Lopes wielded it like an artist. A deadly proficient one. He hooked left.