Department 19: Zero Hour

by Will Hill

  The man’s face wrinkled with disgust. “Don’t call me that,” he said. “My name is John.”

  Thank God, thought Matt.

  “Listen to me, John,” he said. “I know what happened to you, and I’m sorry. You can believe me or not, but I really am. And I’m not here to make you go through that again, I promise. I’m here because you might be able to save millions of lives.”

  “I can’t,” said John Bell. “I can’t do anything.”

  He took another step backwards, on to the corner of Third and Geary.

  “Please stop moving,” said Matt, taking two quick steps forward, the Glock trembling in his hands. “I really don’t want to shoot you.”

  “I can’t,” repeated John Bell. “I can’t go back there. Do you understand that?”

  “I do,” said Matt. “Honestly, I do. This isn’t about that, you have my word on it. No one is going to hurt you again. I know you talked to someone in the desert, someone who was looking for answers. You want to help, John, I know you do. That’s what working at SafetyNet is, right? A way for you to make amends?”

  Bell’s face crumpled, as tears brimmed in his eyes.

  “I thought I could do something,” he said. “I thought that maybe I could help. That I could be free. But I can’t, can I?”

  “You can,” said Matt, his voice almost a shout of desperation. “Yes you can, John. I need to examine you and take some of your blood. That’s all, I swear. After that, you can come back here, back to work, back to your life. I promise you.”

  Bell glanced over his shoulder, then produced a heartbreakingly gentle smile. “You believe that, don’t you?” he said. “You really think they’ll let me go when you’re done with me.”

  “Yes,” said Matt. “I do. Please, just come with me.”

  The man glanced over his shoulder again.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  John Bell turned, far faster than Matt was expecting, and shambled out into the road as fast as his damaged legs would carry him. Matt screamed for him to stop, and was tightening his finger on the pistol’s trigger when the truck that Bell had seen rumbling along Geary ploughed into him.

  There was a thunderclap of blood and a deafening squeal of brakes as Bell was sent flying into the evening air, then disappeared beneath the truck’s wheels.

  The bear rose up on its hind legs as it lumbered forward, and even as terror crashed through him, a tiny part of the man’s brain was able to marvel at its sheer size. Its head was almost three metres above the snow, its legs as thick as tree trunks, its coat a deep, dark brown soaked with melted snow. It peered down at him, breath billowing in white clouds from its open mouth, then roared, a terrible, earth-shattering sound that drove the man back half a step.

  The bear instantly came forward, closing the distance between them to less than five metres as the man raised the shotgun, suddenly so small in his hands, to his shoulder. His breath was coming in sharp bursts – in, out, in, out, in, out – and the gun barrel was shaking in the night air.

  It isn’t even going to get through his coat, thought the man. Not unless it’s point-blank.

  He risked the quickest of glances over his shoulder towards the fence, then checked the GPS locator on his wrist, not taking his eyes off the bear for more than a millisecond each time.

  Eighty-seven metres.

  So close. I was so close.

  Moving incredibly slowly, the man slid to his right until his back was facing the fence; his gaze remained locked on the huge brown eyes, which were regarding him with what looked like curiosity. Carefully, he raised a foot and placed it back down behind him, keeping the shotgun aimed at the animal’s head. A low growl rumbled from the bear’s throat, but it didn’t move.

  The man took another step backwards, then another, opening the gap between himself and the animal. Growling steadily, the bear watched as he backed away, and for a moment, the man allowed himself to entertain the prospect that he might still reach his destination in one piece.

  Then the bear lumbered forward and roared again, spit flying from its mouth in thick ribbons. It pawed the snow-covered ground, its eyes narrowing and fixing directly on the man. He took another step backwards, but the bear had clearly decided not to let him go; it loped towards him, its huge body swinging from side to side, its mouth hanging open to reveal rows of teeth the size of shot glasses.

  The man raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening; it echoed through the dark forest like a clap of thunder, causing the man to grimace with pain as the sound reached his ears.

  The effect on the bear, however, was far more pronounced.

  The huge animal’s eyes widened, then it turned tail and disappeared into the forest so quickly that the man momentarily wondered whether he had hallucinated the entire encounter. Then he saw the footprints the bear had left in the snow, footprints as wide as dinner plates, and laughter burst from his mouth, a cackle of triumph that was dangerously close to hysterical.

  Not today, bear, he thought. Not now. Not today.

  In the distance, the man heard an alarm begin to wail, a steady rise and fall that filled him with delight. He turned awkwardly in the deep snow and looked at the destination he had doubted he would ever reach.

  They’ll be coming. The shot will bring them and they’ll take me home.

  The man lurched towards the fence, wondering what would come first, searching torch beams or the voices of the Operators that carried them. He waded through the snow, the fence drawing closer with each laboured step, his eyes fixed dead ahead, his heart thumping in his chest.

  He smelt the bear a moment before the attack came: a thick animal scent, full of wildness and primal hunger. He tried to turn, bringing up the gun as he did so, but was far, far too slow.

  The bear’s huge paw crashed into the side of his head like a sledgehammer, sending him flying through the air. The power of the blow was devastating; the man’s limbs went limp as he spun like a rag doll, his eyes rolling uncontrollably in their sockets. The shotgun spilled from his hand and he thudded to the ground beside it. The snow broke his fall, but slid inside his clothes, pressing against his skin like daggers made of ice. A sound left the man’s mouth, a guttural noise that his reeling mind didn’t recognise as human; it sounded like the howl of a dying animal.

  His mind was thick and full of fog, and his eyelids seemed to weigh several tons. He fought to keep them open, to resist the urge to let himself slip down into the sweet darkness of unconsciousness.

  Using every last ounce of strength he had left, the man raised his head. The bear was nowhere to be seen, although he knew it was there, watching from the darkness, waiting to move in and finish him off. He hauled himself up to a sitting position, then rolled towards the shotgun, reaching for it with grasping fingers. The movement sent a bolt of pure agony stabbing into the side of his head, and he screamed, a high-pitched noise that sounded distant and disconnected. He flung back the sealskin hood and grabbed at his left ear, trying to squeeze out the pain that was tearing through him as his vision greyed. Nausea boiled up through him, and he resisted the urge to vomit as he coughed and spluttered and tasted acid in his mouth.

  When the pain finally subsided and his vision cleared, the man scanned the clearing again.

  Dark shadows. Gleaming snow.

  No bear.

  Carefully, he took his hand away from his ear and looked at it; the glove was soaked through with blood. The man’s eyes widened, and he raised his hands to his left ear and clapped, softly.

  Nothing.

  He clapped again, harder, then harder still.

  Nothing.

  I can’t hear, he thought, panic rising through him. I can’t hear out of that ear.

  Deaf.

  Trying not to move his head, fighting back rising waves of panic, the man picked up the shotgun. Through his remaining good ear, he could hear shouted voices in the distance.

  Not close enough, he thought, with
sudden, awful resignation. By the time they get here, there’ll be nothing left but a smear of blood.

  The man raised the gun to his shoulder and climbed to his feet. The effort required was superhuman, but he found it from somewhere, from the primal place where everything that doesn’t matter is stripped away, leaving two fundamental opposites.

  Live.

  Or die.

  He tried to slow his breathing, focusing on nothing but himself, the gun and the bear. His vision narrowed to a small window beyond the end of the shotgun’s barrel. His finger rested on the trigger, holding it steady at a quarter pull. He heard his heart thumping in his chest, could feel adrenaline coursing through him.

  Come on, he screamed inside his head. Come on. Come on.

  For a long moment, there was silence.

  Then, with a guttural growl and the thunder of galloping paws, the bear burst from the trees to his right. Its eyes were narrowed with the prospect of the kill, its mouth open joyfully wide, its teeth huge and sharp. The giant paws, tipped with thick, tearing claws, propelled it across the ground at a speed that made no sense for so large an animal.

  The man twisted against the snow, the gun swinging with him, and was face to face with the bear as it thundered into him, its huge weight driving him flat on his back. It bore down, its damp, rotten smell filling his nostrils, its breath a fetid fog that rolled across his face, its roar like rolling thunder in his surviving ear, and he felt something awful as it raked at his stomach with its paws, something profoundly wrong. A single coherent thought filled his mind, as blood that could only be his own began to spray in the freezing air.

  Take. You. With. Me.

  The shotgun moved slowly, as though he were trying to drag it through quicksand. The bear roared again, then lunged, its huge maw snapping down towards his throat. With the last of his strength, the man pushed the shotgun up and out, and the bear’s teeth closed on the barrel with a metallic crunch. Two of them shattered with a noise like breaking plates, and the roar changed, as pain and confusion burst through the animal.

  Then the man pulled the trigger.

  The shot was muffled by the dense bone and thick fur of the animal’s head, but it reverberated up the man’s arm, hammering his shoulder back against the snow. The back of the bear’s head exploded in a steaming geyser, ragged chunks of skull and brain carried upwards on an eruption of blood. Then, as its huge brown eyes rolled back white, the bear slumped to the ground beside the man, blood pumping out of the hole where the top of its head had been, and lay still.

  For a long, empty moment, the man didn’t move.

  The blood-drenched shotgun shook in his hands, as steam rose from both him and the bear in delicate plumes of white. He could taste the animal’s blood on his lips and in the back of his throat, coppery and horribly warm. His mind was frozen, the ability for coherent thought swept away by the sheer, blinding horror of what had befallen him, of what fate had cruelly placed in his path when he had been so close to home.

  Operating on pure instinct, he craned his head forward, looked down at his stomach, and didn’t recognise what he saw. Where there should have been thick white sealskin, there was only red and purple, a quivering, bubbling mass that gleamed horribly in the moonlight. He let his head fall back against the snow and closed his eyes.

  The man felt no pain, just a relentless, sucking tiredness, stronger than he had ever known. He gave himself over to it and sank into gentle oblivion.

  Darkness.

  Warm.

  Empty.

  Darkness.

  Then noise.

  Distant.

  Voices.

  Shouting.

  The man opened his eyes and found himself looking at a white ceiling.

  It was moving, the square tiles sliding past at speed. Floating above him was a chaos of tubes and bags, suspended on a shiny metal frame. Beyond them, a doctor wearing a white coat and a surgical mask stared ahead, his eyes wide and staring.

  The man opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He tried again, licking his cracked lips, and managed a gargling noise, like the sound of a newborn baby. The doctor looked down.

  “Lie still, yes?” he said. “Do not try to move.”

  The man made no response.

  “You have been badly injured,” said the doctor. “We are taking you to surgery. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

  The man tried to nod, but couldn’t. He concentrated, and managed to twist his mouth into the distant approximation of a smile.

  “Good,” said the doctor. “What is your name? Can you tell me your name?”

  “Brennan,” whispered the man, the words little more than croaks. “Richard … Brennan. Safeguard.”

  Then his eyes rolled back in his head, as his heart stopped beating.

  The truck skewed as it braked, its trailer fishtailing through a cloud of tyre smoke and dust, before coming to a juddering halt. Matt stared at it, frozen with horror, until screams began to ring out along Geary, breaking his paralysis.

  Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God. Oh God.

  He staggered along the side of the truck’s cab, his hand over his mouth to keep out the swirling dust, until he reached the pool of red spreading steadily from beneath the third pair of wheels. He could hear shouted voices behind him, and at least half a dozen people making emergency calls, but he ignored them all; he got down on his hands and knees, his limbs shaking violently, and peered under the truck, dreadfully certain of what he was going to see.

  John Bell was lying on the tarmac, staring up at the underside of the truck with wide, dead eyes. He was coated in blood, his arms and legs twisted and broken, but the look on his face was one of unmistakable relief, of glorious escape. Matt reached under the truck, taking care to avoid the smoking rubber of the tyres, and gently pressed his fingers against Bell’s neck.

  Nothing.

  Matt let out a rasping sob, then pushed himself backwards, wiping his fingers furiously on his jeans. He lurched back to his feet, then cried out as a hand dropped on his shoulder and spun him round.

  “Hey,” said a man in a white T-shirt, his eyes wide. “Hey, you saw that, right? He jumped right out in front of me. There wasn’t nothing I could do. You saw, right?”

  Matt nodded, trying to slow his racing heart. “Yeah,” he said. “I saw.”

  “You’ll tell the cops? When they get here, you’ll tell them he ran out?”

  “I’ll tell them.”

  The man nodded. He seemed to be on the verge of shock, and Matt couldn’t blame him. Behind the man, a small crowd had gathered on the pavement, all of them staring at the rapidly spreading pool of blood with a mixture of disgust and excitement on their faces. He was suddenly furious with them; wanted to point his gun at them and make them understand that it was a person lying dead beneath the truck, not some grisly piece of street theatre. John Bell had been as real as any of them, every bit as scared and confused and lost, and now he was dead, and he was never coming back.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Danny Lawrence and Hannah Landsman running down Third Street towards him, their guns drawn. He took a step away from the truck driver and waved them over. They arrived beside him, and as Hannah took charge of the situation, ordering the driver and the rest of the gawking onlookers to get back, Danny took hold of Matt’s arm.

  “Are you all right?” he said, his voice low. “Jesus, Matt, what the hell were you thinking?”

  Matt frowned, then shoved the hand away. “What was I thinking?” he asked, his voice thick with sudden anger. “Where the hell were you? I told you all what was happening.”

  “Bell knew,” said Danny. “He knew, or he was just more paranoid than we were expecting, it doesn’t matter which. He told a colleague he was going to the bathroom, so we were down on the second-floor landing waiting outside the door while he must have been making his way to the roof. When your message came through, Simmons and Andrews came in to find us, but we had to go back up and come
down, and we didn’t know which direction you’d gone. I’m sorry, Matt.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s over, in any case.”

  “Where is he?” asked Danny.

  Matt pointed at the thick puddle of dark red.

  Danny grimaced. “Christ,” he said.

  “He killed himself,” said Matt, his voice low and empty. “He thought I wanted to take him back to another lab. I told him I didn’t, but he wouldn’t believe me. He ran out in front of that truck.”

  “What a mess,” said Danny, his eyes still staring at the spilled blood. “Jesus, what a God-awful mess. Are you sure you’re OK?”

  “I’m fine,” said Matt. “I need my bag. It’s still in the car.”

  “What for?” asked Danny.

  “To do my job.”

  Understanding dawned on the American Operator’s face. He raised his wrist to his mouth and ordered their driver to bring the black SUV to the corner of Third and Geary. It arrived less than a minute later, at the same time as the rest of their squad and a fleet of police cars and ambulances, lights blazing, sirens howling.

  “Don’t worry about them,” said Danny. “Do what you need to do.”

  Matt nodded, then walked across to the SUV. Behind him, he could hear Major Simmons informing the police that they would be allowed to examine the scene when his men were finished, and not a single minute earlier. The discussion had escalated to a shouted argument by the time Matt had retrieved his bag from the back seat of the car and returned to the tarmac beside the body of John Bell; he ignored it, focusing only on what was within his control.

  From his bag he took plastic vials and Petri dishes with screw tops, along with a plastic pouch of medical instruments. As the argument on the pavement reached a deafening crescendo, culminating in Major Simmons informing the policeman that he would be committing career suicide if he said another goddamn word, Matt knelt down and crawled underneath the truck.

  Working quickly, he spooned John Bell’s blood into the vials, grimacing as he did so. When they were filled and sealed, he took a large pair of tweezers, lifted a dozen quivering bits of torn flesh into the Petri dishes, and screwed them shut. It felt wrong, taking from the man only what he needed and leaving the rest of him lying broken in the road, but there was nothing Matt could do for him; the man had gone beyond help. Matt wormed his way further under the truck, until he was beside John Bell’s head. The wheels were so tall that once he was in the cavity between them he could sit upright; he did so, and removed a heavy syringe from his bag.