“There is nothing to gain from here,” said Steve, and as he finished, the Mastermind pushed at his brain. Steve felt as if nails were piercing the top of his head and his spine. Unable to move or do anything, he extended both arms and tried to speak but was unable to do so.
-That is not your decision. The Collective has spoken. I have spoken.
Slowly Steve was released from his restraint, a small reminder that the same control he could exercise on others via the Collective was being exercised on him. This did nothing more than anger him, but he immediately channeled himself to get to the closest soldier again and move towards the security office.
For a moment he thought he was in slow motion. As he tried to move or take action, there was not much he could do through direct control. When trying to return himself to his own body, he struggled to do so, coming back in pieces and regaining control of himself only as if he had gone elsewhere and returned.
“Even that is not working?” asked Steve as he tried to move the soldiers of the Collective, but they were like zombies again.
-The Collective grows and adapts. We have time and no one can stop us. Patience.
“Time is not what we have right now. She may have already called someone, and we need to stop her from making more calls,” said Steve, as he began to move towards the security office, going past the crowds.
-She cannot communicate anymore. Your insistence is unnecessary.
“No, damn it. Those security offices have secure landlines that she can use to get ahold of someone outside. We need to get inside now!” yelled Steve at the top of his lungs.
The Collective had just learned something new that they had not originally predicted from everything they had absorbed so far.
--
Jean had tried through all means to get her phone to work again, but had no luck in getting a signal to call or finding any wireless signal she could use to send messages. She felt more trapped than ever before and for a moment broke down into tears, thinking this was the end of it all.
She thought about things that she could have done differently and what else she could have done before to get someone to listen. Chad had been very clear about it and throughout her life, others had told her the same thing, but she thought that being non-conflictive would earn her more friends and allies.
This turned out to be a lie in the environment where she worked and lived.
There was a moment of silence for her to reflect on this and other things that came flooding into her mind, hurtful memories of things that could have been and that had never manifested--everything so far for nothing. Now she was here, trapped and unable to take action until she looked up and saw the cameras, then something on the dashboard.
A phone.
She immediately picked it up and noticed there was a tone. With this discovery she rapidly looked at her phone and dialed back to Chad who immediately picked up.
“Hello?” asked Chad on the other end.
“It’s me, Chad—Jean,” said Jean as she continued to observe the cameras and saw how the mass of people continued to move, but at a slow rate. Then she saw him, Steve, rushing through the crowds and onto the first floor as if he already knew where to go.
She had little time left.
“Steve knows where I am. He’s coming here,” said Jean. Chad sighed as he tried to push his way through the highway, but he was finding that the traffic at this time was becoming heavier and heavier, the closer he got to the airport. “I will make calls, but I can’t promise something will happen,” Jean told him.
“Whatever you need to do, you need to act fast. Traffic is building up on the highway and I can’t find a way to cut through to the airport,” said Chad as he became more and more frustrated. “Can you call the military and get them to move there? It may be the fastest response you can get from someone.”
“I don’t know who…” said Jean, who then looked at her cellphone, remembering that in her shared ride, she had spoken to a gentleman named Aries. For a moment she felt relief in thinking about it and continued. “I know someone. Not sure how fast he can help us, but he may get through for us.”
“Great! I like the sound of that,” said Chad and finally sighed in relief at hearing her taking more decisive actions. “I will be there as soon as I can. Can’t promise much, seeing the current situation, but will try to find a way.”
“Try your best. I will--,” said Jean, who was interrupted by a bang on the door. As she turned to see the cameras, she could see someone at the door, slowly banging at the door with his bare hands and more people coming in. “They are here,” she said.
“Who?” asked Chad as he heard the banging on the door. “What is that?”
“People are banging at the door. I don’t know what is going on with them, but they are trying to get inside,” said Jean as she went through her phone looking for the number for Aries. “I will call you back in case anything else happens. Let me see if I can get through to this person.”
“Do what you have to do. I’m on my way,” said Chad, who disconnected the call.
As Jean dropped the earpiece onto the phone, she found the number for Aries. While dialing the number, she could see that Steve was already on the first floor, slowly walking towards the security room.
He stopped for a moment and looked at the ceiling, then at one of the cameras. As he noticed it, he raised his left hand and pointed at it with his index finger. Then second laters the feed from that camera was lost and rapidly others followed.
She had never dialed a phone number faster in her life.
Chapter 23
Uplyfting Calls
Aries Zhang was waiting in traffic. His day had come to a halt with traffic reaching a boiling point. “Maybe an accident,” he thought and sighed about it, wishing he could be elsewhere doing anything else. Even being back at the base playing Call of Duty all day was better than this, but he had to make such a bad decision to take a seventy-two just as soon as he jumped in.
Sometimes you just cannot win them all.
He switched over the songs on his phone to something more to his liking, because that one song he had listened to during his last drink out had messed up the entire thing. He hated whatever algorithm did this and whoever did it.
When the song switched over, there was a sudden silence and a call came in. For a moment he was slightly confused at the name he saw on the caller ID.
Hot Girl Lyft.
Then it occurred to him. Just today he had taken a ride in a Lyft and ended up sharing it with the same girl he had sat next to in the airplane. He had been too concentrated on his thoughts to take more notice of her and slightly regretted it once they had their conversation during the ride.
Now he had a chance, though, and wondered what had triggered this so far in her. Maybe something was going on there as he had felt some chemistry, but would she be a good Army wife?
At that point, Aries stopped and picked up the call.
“Hey there,” said Aries, trying to be a smooth as possible. But he noticed that something was going on in the background, some kind of banging and noise that he could not quite make out. “What is--?” he started to ask.
“Aries, please listen to me,” said Jean as she desperately moved more furniture towards the door. “I need your help.”
Confused by this statement, but ready to do anything for a chance, he quickly replied.
“Sure, how can I help?” asked Aries and waited for her response, but it took her some time to get back to him. She sounded agitated and muffled. The noise continued to increase, and for a moment Aries thought it was a door. “Is everything all right?” he wanted to know.
“I am at the airport. A lot is going on right now, but I need you to trust me on what I am about to tell you,” said Jean. Aries was a bit confused by this, but he listened because he was interested in getting a shot and he had nothing better to do, being stuck in traffic. “Can I trust you?” she asked him.
“Sure,” said
Aries. Jean laid out her current situation and everything that had developed so far--the mold, the CDC not taking the necessary action and what had happened with Steve at the airport and where she stood. With every new thing Jean threw at him, Aries was in disbelief of what was happening, but somehow he trusted and believed in what she was telling him. The banging on the door gave some credibility to what she was saying, but he was still somewhat skeptical as to what was going on.
“Can you--?” said Jean, who was interrupted by a loud bang and someone screaming from the outside. She screamed and went back to the furniture she was using to block the entrance to the security room. “Aries, please get someone here. I don’t know how much longer this will hold out.”
“I’ll see what I can do. I am some twenty minutes away from the airport, but I’ll see what I can do,” said Aries, who hung up. He looked up through the list of names he had stored in his phone and pulled out the number for one of his friends he had graduated with in boot camp who was serving in Special Forces.
The phone rang a couple of times. Just as he thought he was not going to get an answer, someone on the other side picked up and a groggy deep voice came alive on the speakers.
“This is Alex,” said the voice. There was a deep sigh followed by silence.
“Hey, man. This is Aries. You remember me?” asked Aries, and there was another moment of silence before he got an answer.
“Aries? Who--? Wait. Boot camp, right?” asked Alex, who came to life for a moment. “Oh, man. Hey, sorry, but I am so dead right now.”
“I get you. Just yesterday I blasted myself, too, and I’m still there, hanging by a thread, but still there,” said Aries while laughing. Alex followed through with some laughs, then let out a long sigh.
“What’s good?” asked Alex. Aries thought about how to best explain it, but rather than taking the long route, he went straight to the point.
“I know you are working in Special Forces. Is it biowarfare or what?” asked Aries. Alex was confused by the question and said that while he was not directly in biowarfare he knew others from boot camp that had pushed through and were serving at Fort Hood. “I need you to pull a big one for me. It’s a lot to ask after not talking for a while, but there is an emergency at the Dallas International Airport,” Aries told him.
“Wait. An emergency, like a real one?” asked Alex, suddenly gaining interest in the conversation. “Is… is there like a terrorist attack or something?”
“Seems like it. I just got a call from a trustworthy contact who told me there is something way too big for the police to take on. Traffic is ruining everything right now, and I’m trying to get there to help, but this is something for biowarfare,” said Aries. As he finished there was a flame that suddenly turned on inside of Alex. He rapidly stood up and kicked some cans while figuring out who was the best contact to get people to move on.
“Do you know who is in charge of the operation?” asked Alex while getting some clothes on and looking at himself in the mirror--dead as always but still living.
“No clue. Civilian doesn’t know, either, and the police are probably not going to say anything to avoid every gun in Dallas showing up and starting a shootout,” said Aries. Alex took it to heart, but he knew there was some reality to that. People in Texas were more than willing to defend their state, but if the police mentioned anything, there would be hundreds rushing in to lend their support. And if this was a coordinated terrorist attack, they could not let civilians die because civilians were getting their own hands into this.
“All right. Let me check back with my CO and push for something. I think that the Army, the Marines, or someone at this point should know, but who knows? I still think we should get involved,” said Alex. He had already picked up the keys to his truck and was leaving. “I’ll catch up with you once I have an update. I’m out,” he said.
“Thanks, man,” said Aries, but the call had already disconnected. As the GPS map came back, he saw that the time had increased to hours to reach the airport. Traffic had stalled next to the airport and nothing was moving around it or near it. “Not good,” he thought to himself.
Aries jumped out of the car and started walking along the highway. Motorists around him had simply turned off the engines of their vehicles or were standing outside chatting. There was no reason for them to burn fuel when nothing was happening, and without any news to tell them what was going on, they had only time to burn.
As he kept walking under the boiling sun he decided to look for alternatives. From behind one of the trucks he had passed, he saw a small razor scooter and someone simply lying back on the driver’s seat resting.
For a moment he made a very rash decision that he hated, but there was no time to waste. He took out his Beretta 192LFS laser pistol from the holster he had on his side and crashed the side window of the truck with a single hit from the stock. The impact grabbed the attention of everyone and the driver immediately got out of his truck while getting out his own handgun.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” asked the driver as he raised the handgun, but at the realization that Aries was dressed in full combat gear, he was confused. “Wait, what is going on?”
“This is an emergency. I need this to get over to the airport,” said Aries. He knew that he had already said too much, but without giving more context as to why he had made such a stupid decision instead of asking, he felt there were probably going to be far more problems to resolve than taking the fast exit. “Here,” he said to the truck driver.
Aries produced a small notepad and wrote his phone number and full name on it, then gave the small piece of paper to the man.
“Call me once this is over. I will pay for the window,” said Aries as he picked out the scooter from the side window. “And the scooter also, in case I don’t return it.”
“What are you waiting for? Get a move on, son,” said the driver as Aries was picking up speed down the highway, thinking that while he might look stupid, this was probably the best option he had aside from running and being scorched to death under the sun.
--
Chad was frustrated. He had not moved for the last fifteen minutes and he was relatively close to the airport, probably no more than some fifteen or twenty minutes, but at this rate, there was nothing he could do.
He tried dialing back to Jean, but he could not get any type of response back from her, either on her cell phone or the landline she had dialed from. He feared for the worse.
While considering the possibilities of what could be done, he noticed that a man was going between the cars at full speed, coming down through the ramp on a scooter.
“What is that?” asked Chad while trying to get a better view. After realizing that the person moving around was wearing a military uniform, he quickly jumped out of the car and signaled to him to stop. Had it not been for the fact that Aries was slowing down as he went down through the ramp, he would have crashed into him, since he had not seen him until he was at least ten feet away from him. “Are you in active duty?” Chad asked him.
“You could say that,” answered Aries. After considering the complicated situation he was still in, he lived in an eternal limbo due to his experience with the Army and being a survivor of one of the worst events the United States Army had seen during its entire existence. To say that they did not want to touch him was an understatement and the fact that he wanted to continue his career in the Army had been somewhat of a worrisome decision, but they still let him.
Of course, this meant they could also use him as a political weapon. Not that they would tell him, but Aries knew this out of logical deduction.
“This may be a coincidence, or maybe not, but are you going to the airport?” asked Chad, having a slight suspicion this may have been the contact Jean had mentioned. He had more suspicions about this person as to how useful he could be to what was currently happening, but realizing this person had a gun and Chad did not was definitely a game-changer at this point.
“Wha
t if that was the case?” asked Aries, not knowing what the intentions of this man were. He had already revealed too much to one civilian. It could always be that word was starting to spread around, so he did not want to tell him any more information.
“I know someone there who is in a very tight spot, and I need to take these barrels to the airport,” said Chad as he pointed to the dioxide chlorine on the back of the van. “This is an emergency, you could say.”
“What is that?” asked Aries, just out of sheer curiosity.
“Dioxide chlorine, but that’s not important. What’s important is that I need to get it over there to help someone who is currently trapped there,” said Chad. Aries shrugged and was confused as to why this man needed to get this thing there so urgently, but then it dawned on him.
“Is this by any chance something a girl from the CDC asked for?” asked Aries. Chad made the connection right then and there.
“Jean sent you, only you?” asked Chad as he sighed in disappointment. Aries took it to heart that Chad had that reaction but could understand that maybe this man was expecting an entire battalion.
“She called me, but I already got in contact with someone else to move the right people around,” said Aries. He got his phone out and saw a text message that made him smile.
-Bio moving, 20 minutes there.
“Well, that’s good news. Biowarfare is moving on,” said Aries. For a moment Chad felt as if he was seeing the light after listening to a bunch of crazy things all day long. “You said you still need to move this, right?”
“Yes, I need to get this to the airport and make a ‘bomb’ with it. Not sure that is the right word, but it works like that once it is set up the right way,” said Chad.
Aries started looking around for something they could do to get this moving. “What’s your name again?” Aries wanted to know.
“Chad. Yours?” asked Chad.
“Aries, like the zodiac sign,” answered Aries. Chad nodded at this as he could see that people most probably made the connection anyway. “Chad, by any chance do you know how to drive a bus?”
Burning Mold Page 17
