by Roland Smith
“Boone. You can’t honestly think this is your fault?” I asked.
Boone just shrugged. But the expression on his face right then was like someone who had done a thing that was so horrible, they would never forgive themselves.
“Take the stairs from the roof and get back to the elevators. I’ve got to go,” he said.
Angela and I were still in shock. We didn’t know what else to do so we shuffled our way to the stairway door. When we reached it, I wanted to ask Boone something.
“Hey, Boone,” I said, turning around.
But he was already gone.
Getting Out
We retraced our steps down the stairs and to the bank of elevators. As we walked, people were pouring out of the offices on the top floor. Everyone was trying to get out at once and the nervousness and tension were palpable. There were several security guys in blue blazers with tablets standing by each elevator. They were checking people off as they went by. The building’s security staff must have had a list of their tenants’ employees as part of their evacuation plan.
There was a crush of people at the elevators. Angela and I tried to get in line and wait for the next available car. The security guys were taking names as people stepped into the cars. They had a system for making sure everyone registered in the building got out. We weren’t registered. Another elevator car arrived and we tried to get on.
“Name?” the blue-coated guy asked.
“Tucker and Munoz,” Angela said without missing a beat.
“Is that one name or two names? Tucker Anne Munoz?” he asked, his brow knitted as he scanned a list of names on his tablet.
“It’s our last names,” Angela said. “Tucker and Munoz.”
The security guy hadn’t been paying attention but now he looked at us. And he got a confused look on his face. “Company?” he asked.
“We’re here on a school project. We were interviewing people at the Advantage Automated Graphics offices for our school paper,” Angela said. “Do you know what’s going on? We’re really scared.” She put her arm around my shoulders. “My stepbrother has social anxiety disorder. He’s freaking out a little. I need to get him out of here,” she said. “It’s okay, Q. It’s going to be okay.” She squeezed my shoulder as she looked at me with the moony, sad eyes again.
I gave her a dirty look at first, but then tried to look scared and socially anxious. We couldn’t afford any questions. Questions would lead to us being up on the roof where there were three canisters of liquid poison. And that would be hard for us to explain.
Right then another elevator door opened and six guys in black jumpsuits with large duffel bags walked out. Dollars to doughnuts it was J.R.’s clean-up crew. That J.R. doesn’t mess around.
The guys flashed credentials at the security guy and headed down the hallway that would eventually lead them to the roof stairway. While the guard was watching them, Angela pulled me into the car and pushed the button.
“Hey!” the guard shouted. “What did you say—”
“Sorry,” Angela yelled as the door was closing, “I need to get him out of here or he’ll have a total meltdown.”
The door shut before he could do anything.
“Social anxiety disorder?” Our ears were popping as the elevator descended.
“Stop complaining about plans that work,” she said.
“What is Advantage Automated Graphics?” I asked.
“I memorized some of the company names on the doors as we passed by the first time. In case we got caught we were going to need some kind of excuse.”
“Okay, but next time could I have something besides social anxiety disorder?”
“Like what?” she asked, not really paying attention to me.
“I don’t know. A disease where loud noises turn me into a ninja or something,” I said.
“You’re hopeless.”
I had no argument. I was starting to feel like a human being again.
The elevator door opened. It was like stepping into a Hollywood disaster movie. The lobby was a sea of running, screaming people. Crowds surged out of the other elevator cars like a flash flood shooting out of a canyon. The building security force was overwhelmed. Announcements over the intercom asking for calm had no effect. Everyone was running for their lives. The main doors leading out through the lobby were jammed by waves and waves of people.
“You get in front,” Angela said. “You’re taller and can see over the crowd. Let’s try to stick close to the wall. There will be fewer people on the edges. Should be easier to reach the doors.”
Angela wanted to be a Secret Service agent. I was willing to bet she had already studied the Secret Service training manual. She’d probably already memorized the “How to Evacuate a Building During an Emergency” chapter. Since I didn’t have a better suggestion I stepped into the crowd.
When I was growing up in California, my mom often took me to the beach. Sometimes the waves would be really rough. Even if you only went into the water up to your knees, the surf rolled in hard and could drive you into the sand. Being swept up by the crowd felt worse. Everyone was in an absolute panic to get out. Angela grabbed my belt and held on as I tried to plow my way through the river of terrified humanity.
In front of me a woman fell down and I stopped to help her to her feet.
“People are out of control,” Angela shouted into my ear over the noise. “We need to find another way out of here.”
“How?” I said. “We can barely move as it is.”
We cleared the little hallway from the bank of elevators and entered the main lobby. There was a large semicircular wooden desk where the security guys sat. It was deserted. I darted behind it and Angela followed me as we watched the rest of the crowd keep pressing toward the front doors. Unable to contain the mass of human beings trying to fit through, the glass in the front doors and the windows next to the doors shattered. People started flooding through the smashed windows ignoring the broken glass.
“What are we going to do?” Angela asked.
“I don’t know. But I think we have to get back to the van as fast as we can. If my mom and Roger find out we aren’t where they think we are …” I let the words trail off. If they learned we were running around the streets of Chicago during a national emergency, we were toast. I suspected Marie, Art, and Boone would be hustling Roger and Mom back to the hotel as quickly as they could. The first thing they would want to do is find us.
As it turned out, Boone didn’t let us down.
I heard a bark behind me and looked around. There sat Croc on his haunches.
He was holding a leash in his mouth.
Mad Dog
Here’s a tip you can use if you are trying to make your way through a crowd of terrified people. Have a dog on a leash. Let the dog pretend to be a raging, maniacal, snapping, growling, snarling, potentially rabid killing machine. And suddenly the people become more terrified of the insane dog than they do of whatever emergency they are facing.
When Croc reappeared, at first we didn’t know what to do with the leash hanging from his mouth. He dropped it on the floor at our feet and made a whimpering noise. We were confused.
“Hey, Croc, buddy,” I said, “nice leash.”
He scratched at the leash with his paws and whined again. Then he rolled over on it, rising to his feet, digging at it again with his forepaws.
Of course Angela figured it out. “I think he wants us to put it on him.”
The lobby was still jam-packed with people and it didn’t look like we were going anywhere soon. I reached down and fastened the leash to his collar. He nearly tore my arm off as soon as it was attached. Croc charged into the crowd, dragging me behind him. Angela barely had time to snatch my belt or we might have been separated in the crush of humanity.
Croc reared up on his hind legs, barking and howling. People took notice, and somehow space developed in front of us. Croc leaped forward. Whenever the crowd started to close in, Croc snarled and bared his t
eeth and we were given a wider berth.
“Sorry!” I yelled as we lunged past people. “He’s a service dog. He’s trying to get me to safety.”
It would have taken us a long time to cross the huge lobby, but with Croc’s help we were through the door and out on the street in minutes. Croc was still pulling me along. Apparently he took Boone’s admonition that we get back to the intellimobile as fast as possible quite seriously. Though it was still crowded on the sidewalks, we had a little more room to maneuver.
There is no way to prepare yourself for what you witness in a full-on panic. Especially in a major city. With communications cut off so abruptly, Chicagoans had no idea if they would be attacked next. At every skyscraper we passed, streams of people emptied out into a vast river of humanity.
The police, firefighters, and first responders were doing a fantastic job of funneling people toward the trains and buses that they hoped would carry them to shelter. We saw a lot of panicked, frightened people, shoving and pushing, frantic in their efforts to get to safety.
Our cell phones beeped. Every once in a while, if you’re listening to the radio, you hear them talk about the Emergency Alert System. Radio stations have to test it every so often and when they do, you hear a loud tone for sixty seconds. It appeared to be back online. Except the service was only one way. Text messages flooded in. They said the city was preparing for the possibility of a potential chemical attack. The downtown area was thought to be a target. Emergency evacuation points were being established. Traffic was being rerouted to get people out of the city. More information flowed in, but there was no way to get a message out. No matter how we tried. Links appeared showing maps of the city with rendezvous points for evacuation to safe zones.
“They must take control of the cell towers,” Angela said.
“I wonder why Boone hasn’t let J.R. know that everything is okay here,” I said, as Croc still jerked me along, determined to reach the intellimobile.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But he must have a reason. Maybe they want the cell to think something went wrong, like with the car bombs at Kitty Hawk. So the cell still thinks there’s a chemical weapon that could still go off or … I don’t know. But they must have their reasons.”
Two more blocks and we were at the intellimobile. We pounded on the rear door panels and a few seconds later X-Ray poked his head out.
“Oh, it’s you guys,” he said. “Get in.”
The three of us scrambled inside. I noticed X-Ray was holding a very big, very scary-looking pistol in his left hand, which he holstered inside the windbreaker he was wearing. Croc trotted up to the shotgun seat, like he always did. But this time, instead of curling up and going to sleep, he sat up on his haunches, alert and staring out the windshield.
“What’s the word?” Angela asked X-Ray.
“Both of your parents are safe. Marie and Art did what they were trained for and got Roger and Blaze out of there as soon as the news about Atlanta and L.A. hit the airwaves. They also did it without tipping their hands that they’re working for Boone. Malak is safe with Ziv. Someone showed up and tried to keep her in the park. We think it was set up so that it would look like the Leopard had accidentally been caught in her own attack. She took him out and Callaghan and Uly got him out of there. Boone wants you to stay here until Felix and Uly can get to the hotel. Then Roger and Blaze probably won’t want you out of their sight for a while. The rest of us will rendezvous and figure out our next plan.”
“Where is Ziv taking my mom?” Angela asked.
“I don’t know yet. He won’t contact us until he’s at a safe location. He’s probably got a dozen places to take her. But if she’s been made, he’ll be cautious until he knows she’s safe. We’ll hear from him when he decides it’s time.”
Angela stared off into space with a blank look on her face. I knew she was worried about her mom but I couldn’t think of anything to say that would make her feel better.
“We don’t know anything for sure, Angela,” X-Ray said. He didn’t sound too convincing.
“X-Ray, what happened in Atlanta and L.A.?” Angela asked. I was too overwhelmed to ask questions. Now that I felt relatively secure, I was trying to take everything in and finding it difficult. For the time being Angela seemed to have forgotten all about my poofing on the roof. I sure hadn’t, though. My stomach wouldn’t let me forget either.
X-Ray sighed. A look of terrible sadness came over his face.
“It’s bad. There were gas attacks in Atlanta and L.A. at 8:46 a.m. this morning. We’re not sure what type or how toxic it is yet. But it was … horrible.” X-Ray’s voice trailed off.
“How many people …?” Angela started to say, but stopped because she couldn’t bring herself to ask the question. But X-Ray knew what she was asking.
“Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands by the time all is said and done,” he said.
Angela slammed her right fist into her left palm. Her face flushed red and her eyes looked like they had little flecks of lightning in them.
“We have got to stop these guys,” she declared.
X-Ray looked at us. His kind face was sad and tired, and like all of Boone’s crew, I wondered when was the last time he’d had a good night’s sleep. He glared back at us and through the fatigue and exhaustion I saw fierce determination.
“Roger that,” he said.
Changes
“What are we going to do, Mom?” I asked.
We were back in the hotel. Roger and Mom sat on a couch in the sitting room. Angela sat across from them. I couldn’t stop pacing. Once again a deck of cards had appeared in my hands. But even cutting and shuffling wasn’t calming me down this time.
We had stayed in the intellimobile until Felix and Uly showed up and escorted us back to our rooms. I changed my clothes and got rid of the cargo shorts with the bullet hole in them. That would be hard to explain. Then we waited for our parents to arrive. Waiting has never been my favorite thing. It felt like a lifetime until Marie knocked on our door and had us come join Mom and Roger in their suite. Felix and Uly left to do SOS stuff. Marie never moved more than four feet from the door and Art kept checking the windows and cracking his knuckles. I thought about how, just a few days ago, I never would have noticed anything unusual about his behavior. Now I understood he was checking each window, probably looking for anything suspicious. But mostly he was likely just ticked off that he wasn’t out there busting a terrorist’s head open. I had the feeling Art liked to break things in his off hours.
“Roger and I have talked about it. All air traffic has been temporarily grounded, but as soon as we can make it to Sausalito the venue has said they’ll hold the concert. We’ve decided to continue with the tour as soon as normal travel is restored,” she said. Roger nodded his head in agreement.
“Are you sure that’s wise, Dad? Being out in a crowded venue? Exposing yourself like that?” Angela asked. There had still been no word from Ziv or Malak, so Angela was quiet and … I’d say the word was angry. Not at her dad or me or anybody. Maybe just mad at the world. Right now all this stuff was happening and every time it seemed we might be close to ending it—and she could finally reunite with her mom—something else really bad happened and kept them apart.
Roger looked at my mom for a moment before he answered.
“I don’t know, honey,” he said. “The world is … it’s just upside down right now. But Blaze and I talked about it. We’re going to keep the tour going. We’re going to keep raising money for the victims. We will not let a bunch of cowardly thugs dictate how we live our lives.”
“What if no one comes to the concerts?” I asked. “Because they’re too afraid.”
“Then they don’t come,” Mom replied. “We can’t control what other people do. But we can control how we react to it. If people don’t show up, they don’t show up. We’re still playing.”
I knew better than to argue with her. Once Mom had made up her mind, no one was going to convince her otherwis
e. Except for the nagging issue that the ghost cell seemed to keep following us around. But maybe now that Buddy T. was gone, they wouldn’t have any insider information to use against us.
“Mom, Roger,” I said. “If it matters at all, I think you’re doing the right thing.”
“Me, too,” Angela said. I knew she was still worried and scared for Malak. But even scared, worried Angela knew they were right.
“It matters,” my mom said. I even think she got a little teary-eyed. “It matters a lot.”
My cell phone chirped.
“It’s Boone,” I said. “Hello?”
“Hey, Q, are you with your folks?”
“Yes.”
“Do me a favor and put me on speaker,” he said.
I did as he asked and set the phone on the table in front of the couch.
“Boone?” Mom asked. “Is everything all right?”
“Purty near,” he said, with the familiar country-boy drawl he used when he was in roadie mode. “You probably heard all the flights have been canceled for now. We managed to get all the equipment loaded on the truck. Anyhow, I just heard from Heather. She’s gonna have her plane fueled up and ready to go as soon as it’s okay to fly. Luckily we had the second truck already on the road. You still plannin’ to play?”
“Boone, if we can get there, we’re playing,” Mom answered.
“That’s what I figured. Well, the other truck has already arrived, so you got equipment and everything you need. I guess we just gotta get you and the rest of the crew there, is all.”
“We’ll get there somehow,” Mom said. “I have a feeling.”
“Me, too,” Boone said. “Hey, Q and Angela?”
“Yeah?” we asked.
“Since y’all are with your mom and dad, I’ll catch up with you once we’re in California. If I can get a flight, that is. I gotta stay behind and figure out how to get all the gear to the next stop. It’s kind of chaos right now. But Pat Callaghan’s gonna go with you once the flight restrictions get lifted. That work for you and Roger and Blaze?”