by Evans, John
Inside, the “hotel manager” opened Voskuil’s personal safe. The guard remained nearby, a machine gun slung around his shoulder on a strap.
“We took the liberty of removing the early withdrawal fee,” Wellington’s associate told Voskuil as he handed Voskuil the briefcase inside. It felt noticeably lighter. Damn them.
“Early withdrawal fee? What the hell are you talking about? We never—”
“Dr. Voskuil, we don’t ask any questions here,” the man said, and looked meaningfully at Voskuil’s sleeve. There was a blood stain on it. Voskuil had noticed it in that first wild car-ride and resolved to change his coat when he got home. But as he rushed out, he’d put on his usual coat again. Idiot!
“We think our clients like it better that way. Don’t you?”
“Fine,” he snapped, carrying out his money. They’d probably removed the “fee” upon his original deposit. Whenever he came would be considered an “early withdrawal.”
Acutely feeling the preciousness of every second, Voskuil hurried back to his car. His next stop was the Center, where he would obtain what he needed. Supplies and….the necessary transportation.
After all, he was about to embark on a road trip of his own.
#
Lena awoke screaming from a nightmare. Her cry ended abruptly because she was instantly reassured by the familiar sense memory of their cozy bedroom. Decorated in warm earth-tones, it had a womb-like feel accentuated by the bed’s enormous creme-colored comforter.
Nic awoke and wrapped Lena in her arms. “I’m here, baby. You’re okay now.”
Lena nodded, wide-awake now. She wasn’t crying, nor even trembling, but her face retained a stricken cast that suggested dreaded basement doors were opened in her dreamscape.
Nic stroked her hair, whispering reassurances into Lena’s ear. “Just a bad dream, I have ‘em, too. Usually about them….”
To her credit, Nic immediately registered what she’d said and looked mortified. “Wow. Some bedside manner. Now we know why I’m not in your business.”
“I’m fine,” Lena said, a little distantly. “Go back to sleep. God knows we need some.”
Nic kissed her forehead. “Okay, baby. Love you.”
“I love you, too.” Lena turned away. She relaxed almost immediately, as if against her will her exhausted body had simply wrenched consciousness away. A survival instinct from a part of her brain that put self-preservation above all else.
And she slept once more.
#
Voskuil carefully made his way down the corridor toward the supply closet. He was having no trouble suppressing his body’s instinct to sleep. In fact, if you checked inside Voskuil’s head, you would see that his adrenalin had been firing almost nonstop since he was bitten. He would be doubly exhausted when his mental drugstore ran out of stimulants, but until then, every fiber of his being was on high alert.
Voskuil made it to the closet without seeing anyone seeing him. That was the green light. He opened the door, went inside, and shut it behind him.
The light came on automatically. Voskuil was confronted with shelves of powerful drugs. The kind of thing you would lose your career for if you were caught carrying out of the Center.
Ironically enough, Voskuil had been liberating a modest share of the Center’s stock for over a year. He circumvented security by siphoning from the delivery trucks, with the help of three drivers he’d made “associate partners.”
At the moment, he had a sizeable cache in a storage facility near SeaTac Airport, awaiting sale. However, even if Voskuil was inclined to drive down there, it had precious little of what he needed now.
Voskuil needed the most powerful antiviral drugs known to man.
As if on cue, he felt a pang from his wound, more insidious tickle than stabbing pain. Just a friendly reminder it was there. Voskuil ascribed a malevolence to the twin punctures in his flesh that was more akin to demonic possession than a flu bug.
He fought to stay focused, scanning labels on the shelves. His eyes seemed to look right through them, mind unwillingly conjuring each step of his degeneration into a stinking, mindless horror.
At last Voskuil spotted the Ribavarin, Amantadine and Pleconaril. He scooped a bottle of each into the baggie he’d produced from his pocket.
Tests had conclusively proven that immediate application of these drugs would retard the progress of infection, in some cases by as many as six hours. This was hard data, obtained the right way. So Voskuil believed it.
Why their efficacy was not widely publicized was the very reason Voskuil had none on hand, and there was little market for such treatments. “THERE IS NO CURE.” Forestalling the inevitable was not only pointless, it was dangerous. If a v-carrier lingered those extra hours in the general populace, it only gave them more time to infect others.
So Voskuil grabbed as much of the stuff as he could carry.
He turned to leave and was confronted with the opening door. Fittingly enough, the interloper was that lazy physician assistant, Leon Spivey, his droopy, stoner eyes registering surprise that the closet was occupied.
“What’s up, Leon,” Voskuil said, unconvincingly.
“Uh, nothing much, Doc,” Leon said, his smart-ass tone betraying suspicion already. “Find what you were looking for?”
Voskuil realized that while his hands were empty, he’d been headed for the door. It looked as though he’d either put something back or, more likely, forgotten what he’d come here for.
It did not appear, except to the most distrustful of eyes, that he’d already stuffed his pockets full of drugs.
“Here we go,” Voskuil said, rather lamely, and grabbed a package of latex exam gloves.
“Somebody forget to keep Triage stocked?” Leon asked, seemingly innocently.
“I like to keep a box of my own handy.”
Voskuil’s smile was more of a wince. He left. Leon looked along the shelf where Voskuil had been standing. He saw that quite a few of the provisions from that area were missing. In fact, there were barely any of the virus-fighting drugs left at all.
Leon had, at least in the matter of James Voskuil, the most distrustful of eyes. He thought the man was a racist, stuffed-shirt scumball. So anything wrong that James Voskuil did, if it could get his ass booted, was something Leon could immediately take an interest in.
#
The ringing phone flashed with a muted amber glow, designed to make it easy to find in a darkened bedroom. Lena rolled to grab the handset from her night-table, feeling very much as though a truck had just run over her. All told, she’d managed to cobble together about three hours of sleep, which gave her an approximate total of seven in the last two days.
If being a feeder felt worse, she would be surprised.
“Gladden,” said the voice on the other end, after she’d croaked a weak hello, “Need you to come in early. We’re slammed. Can you do it?”
Lena glanced at the fiery numerals of the bedside clock. It was 3:51 am. “Yeah. I was getting up in half an hour anyway.”
“Great,” the caller said, and hung up.
Only later did Lena realize it was James Voskuil on the other end of the line.
She rose groggily to a sitting position, feeling about a hundred years old. She glanced over and saw Nic was already looking at her. Lena wondered if it was possible that Nic was awake before the phone rang.
“They need me to come in,” Lena mumbled, adjusting the hem of her encroaching panties as she staggered to the bathroom.
“Great,” Nic said, echoing Voskuil but with a very different sentiment behind the word.
Lena began to wake up when the shower water hit her bare skin. She wondered what kind of madhouse awaited her at the Center. There must have been a major accident, or another shootout.
Toweling off, she noticed Nic was still watching her from the bed.
“Trouble sleeping?” Lena asked, somewhat pointedly.
“Sort of,” Nic said. “I’m finding it harder to
watch you walk out the door this morning. Wonder why that is?”
Lena sighed and yanked open her dresser drawer. It was too early in the morning for this shit. She searched her mind for a response that wasn’t as bitchy as the first several that came to mind. “You’ll be happy to have a kid who cares about you when you’re old and can’t kill zombies with your bare hands anymore.”
She was expecting a laugh, but didn’t get one.
#
Voskuil was pleased to see Lena shamble onto the floor, looking half-dead and pissed but otherwise ready to play her part in his little comedy.
“Thanks Gladden, walk with me,” he said without breaking stride, so she would accompany him down the hall. She trudged along beside him. Voskuil had gotten better at the whole lying-to-keep-himself-alive thing since the debacle with Leon. He had regained some measure of composure while waiting for Lena to arrive. The tradeoff was losing more of what was most precious of all: time.
It was now 4:30 a.m., six-and-a-half hours since he contracted the virus. Nearly a third of a day. The calculation diminished some of the composure he’d regained.
Voskuil led Gladden into an unused examination room. It was only when she saw there was no patient in the room that she showed the first sign of being unnerved.
By then, he’d drawn the gun.
“Jesus,” Lena said, flinching away by reflex, assuming that Voskuil meant to pull the trigger.
“Cool it,” Voskuil said, holding up his other hand. “I won’t shoot unless you make me.”
She nodded abruptly but didn’t relax much.
“Now, I’m about to put this away. Too big a chance someone will walk by. But you know I have it, and you know I’ll use it. Right?”
“Right,” Lena said, though her gaze was disoriented. He slipped the pistol into his pocket.
“Now, Lena…. I’ve gotten to know you pretty well, I think. I know that, even though you should, you don’t come to the hospital armed. And if you ever did, you’d put it in your locker, you wouldn’t carry. So I’m not going to actually threaten you again. But you know what you know, and I know what I know. I just need a little help, so don’t push it, okay?”
Lena nodded. Voskuil thought he saw when the gearshift took place and she decided to play along. It had been when he used the word “help.”
Sucker.
#
Lena let Voskuil guide her to the elevator, into the parking garage, and all the way to his car. As well as Voskuil thought he knew her, after a few months of simple observation, Lena knew him much better. In a profession where your daily work included the decision to kill other human beings, it became easy to establish where one stood on the issue.
Voskuil was a killer. And, as he had correctly pointed out, Lena was not armed. Damn it. There was no easy way out.
“Get in the trunk,” Voskuil said, popping it open with a furtive look around.
“James,” she began, but he cut her off.
“We can’t risk a hassle at the gate! If we’re seen leaving together, eyebrows will be raised. Am I right?”
Lena nodded and climbed into the trunk, gingerly arranging herself. Like any sports car, the Porsche wasn’t big on trunk space, but there was little in there except a briefcase and the standard roadside emergency supplies.
Lena felt the car settle on its shocks as Voskuil threw himself into the driver’s seat. The engine turned on, making the chassis thrum slightly, and Lena had to brace herself against inertia as the car shifted into reverse and then drive.
Lying there in the dark, Lena wondered how the hell she’d gotten herself into this bizarre predicament. She could fathom no action she should have taken to avoid it and, besides, looking back was pointless. She needed to think about how she was going to get herself — and the baby — away from Voskuil, before whatever he was up to turned dangerous.
Before she knew it, the car slowed to a halt. She sensed Voskuil getting out and walking around to the trunk.
It opened and he beckoned her into the wan early morning. Blinking, Lena climbed out. They were parked in a nearby pay lot and no one was around. She recognized the street — a few blocks from the Center.
“Let’s sit in the car for a little while,” Voskuil said. “I’ll get you up to speed.”
Lena nodded tightly and slid into the passenger seat beside Voskuil. Their view was of dirty concrete — the next building over, still asleep before its workday began. Lena kept her eyes on it, mostly, while Voskuil hurriedly told her what had happened to him and what he wanted her to do. It seemed simple enough, but she could tell that was only step one.
“So you need me to call Nic. That’s all?”
“For now,” Voskuil confirmed. “Then give me the phone. You’ll learn more when she does.”
Lena dialed. She did need to know what he had in mind, and alerting Nic was the best chance to escape she’d gotten yet.
After four rings there was a click and Nic said, “What’s wrong?”
She would have answered the phone that way even before the revelations of the previous night. Lena NEVER called Nic from work. Every day was one headlong rush toward a merciful end to her shift. The time to call and coo sweet nothings at each other was nonexistent in their brutal schedules.
“Um, well, here’s Jim Voskuil,” Lena said, handing the phone to him. He didn’t seem displeased with how Lena was doing so far. For someone so smart, she couldn’t believe he was being this dumb. They were going to tell her killing machine of a wife why Voskuil had abducted Lena. Great idea. Voskuil killed people with a needle to the back of the head. Nic used a well-aimed bullet to hit that spot. If you were lucky.
“Hey Nic,” Voskuil said. “I met you at that cookout last summer.”
Given their tight quarters and the volume of Nic’s voice, Lena had no trouble hearing her response. “What the fuck is going on?”
“That’s how it’s gonna be, huh? Fine!”
Now Lena saw a dangerous ire in Voskuil. It scared her, because it smacked of insane desperation. Nic shouldn’t goad him; there was definitely threat behind this particular brand of crazy.
On the phone, Nic‘s voice thrummed with controlled anger. “Tell. Me. What. You want!”
“You to bring your ass down here!” Voskuil said, the words coming in a rush. “And just you, or your next move will be planning Lena’s funeral arrangements.”
“I’m on my way,” Nic said. There were crashing sounds on her end of the phone. Lena guessed she’d torn the closet rod down when grabbing her coat.
“Here’s what you gotta bring: your official car, two days’ food and water, and plenty of weapons. You two are taking me to Atlanta.”
#
Nic listened closely and quickly got the gist of Voskuil’s lunatic plan. Using Nic’s Virus Control vehicle, with its official signage and plates, they would make their way across the forbidden network of Interstates — maintained for official use only — to the CDC in Atlanta. They would make the trip as quickly as humanly possible. His life was at stake, so theirs would be, too.
“Sorry, honestly, it’s just the way it goes,” Voskuil said. “I’d go alone if I could. My buddy found a cure, so I’m gonna be the first person you know who kicked this thing.”
“It’ll take me about half an hour to get what we need,” Nic said, partially to provide an ETA but mostly to shut him up. She wanted to kill this man with her bare hands, and she knew exactly how she’d do it. A nice hard twist to the upper spinal column would get the job done quick.
In the meantime, however, she would play nice. Because Nic had a sinking feeling that unless she handled this perfectly, everyone involved was as good as dead.
“Okay, keep me posted,” Voskuil said. “But seriously? You better haul ass if you want to see your sweetie again. Alive, anyway.”
“Just know that keeping Lena safe is your only hope. If you hurt her, or let her be hurt…. I’ll make sure you don’t get to Atlanta.”
“You do your par
t, I’ll do mine,” Voskuil snapped, but Nic was pretty certain he got her point.
#
Colonel Coughlin eyed the freelancer in front of him with a mixture of respect, fascination and disgust. After all, Armstead was like an exotic zoo animal whose lethality didn’t really belong in a civilized nation and was best suited to the wilderness. He insisted on standing, even though Coughlin had comfortable chairs positioned opposite his desk. Just because this was an Army base didn’t mean Coughlin was a Spartan.
“Nice work. I didn’t think our late, great Mayor’s enclave could be taken out without a small army.”
“It couldn’t be,” Armstead said. “So I mustered an army.”
Coughlin smiled, liking the kid’s brass balls. He couldn’t be more than 25, this strange mercenary asset. The Department of Homeland Security hadn’t steered Coughlin wrong. If they had a dozen Armsteads, things would be a lot easier in the permanent war zone between cities.
“I feel like every dollar we give you, you put right back into your toys and tools,” Coughlin said.
“I’ve never been that hot to have a 401k,” Armstead said. His face had a strange Chris Evans look to it, even with the scars and the grime and premature gray in his light beard. This kid was a real piece of work.
“Well, keep it up,” Coughlin said, sliding the briefcase of cash across the table. “You’re a credit to your country.”
Armstead stepped forward, cutting a look at the corporals positioned behind Coughlin as if this were a drug deal about to go wrong.
Coughlin had to admit, it was hard to overdo it on paranoia these days. “Why don’t you take a vacation or something,” he said, on impulse. He didn’t want the kid to burn out. This kind of talent shouldn’t be wasted. “Puerto Rico is as safe as ever. Lie on a beach for awhile. Don’t get soft, but get right.”