by David Beers
Yours,
Luke Titan, MD, PhD, Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Top Ten of America’s Most Wanted
“And how many times have you read that letter?” the other asked.
Christian stood from the chair. He didn’t know why, exactly, but he thought he should leave his mansion now. Something was … amiss back in the real world.
“You feel it, too?” the other asked. “I’ve been thinking something was wrong for a few minutes, but I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Chapter 8
Christian opened his eyes. He didn’t wear a watch and didn’t need to check a clock to understand the time; his mind never lost track of it. He’d been in the mansion for two hours and Tommy should be in his office by now. He would have recognized what Christian was doing when he arrived and not disturbed him.
Why do you feel like something’s wrong? There’s nothing out of the ordinary happening.
He still didn’t know, but didn’t care either. Something wasn’t right here.
Christian got up from his desk and walked out of the room, turning into Tommy’s.
“Hey,” he said, “Is anything going on upstairs?”
“What do you mean?”
“How long ago did you get here?”
“An hour.”
Christian closed his eyes, still standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing?” Tommy asked.
Christian didn’t answer. He was trying to push out any distractions, wanting to focus on what his mind knew but couldn’t tell him. Why did he feel so nervous? What was he missing?
It was in the air. The smell.
Christian opened his eyes. “Simone. We’ve got to find Simone.”
Simone Goodfriend stepped from her car about five minutes before Christian came out of his mansion. The parking lot was growing congested, but she was still able to get her usual spot. Her attention wasn’t on parking when the world erupted in fire around her; she was focusing on Christian, hoping that the man had gotten some sleep the night before.
She worried a lot about Christian and Tommy, even if she showed it by berating them. She had to do it like that, though, or else she’d be run over. The FBI wasn’t inherently sexist, but crime fighting was a male profession—and Simone was okay with that. A feminist, she was not … at least not in the sense that all female shortcomings could be blamed on the patriarchy.
She knew a lot of what had transpired between her two partners and Luke Titan. She had never met Titan and didn’t want to, but if she did, she would be one of the first to fire a bullet at the bastard. He’d destroyed two men, two good men, and the world was short on those as far as Simone was concerned. At 33, she was unmarried, though in another life she might have seen herself being able to settle down with someone like Christian.
Not in this life, though.
The time for settling down had passed Christian by, probably around the time Titan plunged a knife into his face.
He needed more sleep and Tommy needed more therapy. Simone couldn’t help—or rather, she couldn’t help with everything they needed. She did what she could, though it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, not as long as Titan lived.
Simone flashed her badge at the card reader and then reached for the front door.
It sounded like a thousand hands clapping at once behind her.
She turned around, her eyes wide, and she saw what made the noise.
Fifty white vans had surrounded the building. She didn’t know where they came from, having been deep inside her own mind during the walk from her car to the door, but they were here now. The ‘clap’ had been all of the doors opening at one time.
Other people stood in the parking lot. They had all stopped and were staring just like Simone.
The vans formed a semi-circle across the parking lot. Simone’s eyes followed them from one end to the other, and she briefly wondered if the other side of the building was the same.
A crazy thought, given how weird all of this was.
Men swarmed out of the vans, both the front doors and the back, which was when Simone realized exactly how weird the situation was—except weird no longer described it. Fucked was a better word.
The men wore heavy vests and each one held large, automatic rifles.
A small breath escaped Simone’s mouth.
“RUN!” she screamed, the first sound to break out across the parking lot.
The next was the sound of bullets exploding from barrels.
“What are you talking about?” Tommy asked.
“Why isn’t there an alarm going off?”
“Christian, I’m not understanding.”
Christian still stood in Tommy’s office, though he knew he had already wasted too much time. The smell was growing stronger by the second.
“There’s gunpowder in the air. Do you smell it?”
Tommy sat rigidly still as always, but his eyes flicked away from Christian to the wall.
“Oh, God,” he whispered.
At that moment, an almost excruciatingly loud siren started booming from the walls. It wailed across the entire floor, interspersed with a calm woman’s voice.
“This is not a drill. Code nineteen. This is not a drill.”
“Simone,” Tommy said, his words almost completely lost in the noise around them. “She’s upstairs. She probably just got to work.”
Christian stopped speaking. He turned and ran, unholstering his weapon as he did. He had no idea what was happening, only that Luke was behind it.
He also knew that enough people had died because of he and Luke. Simone wouldn’t be another casualty.
Simone hadn’t done field work for the FBI, but she wasn’t an idiot either. She dove inside the building, hitting the floor with a bone creaking slam.
The windows exploded behind her, glass flying through the air as if a tornado roared in the parking lot.
Simone looked up, hair covering much of her face, and saw people still standing in front of her. They looked like deer in headlights, except instead of lights, they were staring at guns. Bullets tore into them and Simone watched as large red patches bloomed on blue and white shirts. She watched a skull explode just in front of her.
She knew him. His name was Frederick.
How many times had she talked to Frederick as she walked past security every morning?
She could hear nothing except for the sound of miniature explosions ripping through the air behind her. Simone dropped her head to the floor and saw blood leaking across it. She followed its path to a fat woman who lay slumped halfway down on the floor—her upper body sitting upright against the security check-in station. Her leg below her right knee was missing, only white bone and red flesh jutting out like some kind of slaughtered animal.
Simone didn’t cry, and later she would find no pride in that fact—thinking she had only been in shock. She began to crawl. Her only thought to move away from the danger.
She didn’t know if people were running in behind her, only that bullets still flew overhead like tiny missiles. She had to get away from them. That was what mattered.
Screams, glass, and blood filled the air, as Simone crawled deeper into the building.
“This is fun!”
Charles could barely contain himself. The first three television stations showed live coverage of the attacks. The two way radios sat on the coffee table, each one filling the room with different voices. Charles didn’t care about them anymore. He was too interested in the televisions (halfway wondering when the last news channel would get with the program) and the carnage on them.
Aerial views looked down upon the parking lots, helicopters flying overhead. Each building looked relatively similar, only the surrounding landscape appearing different. White vans sat across either streets or parking lots, with the men inside having emptied out. They formed loose circles around the building, and were slowly tightening their nooses, moving in as they continued firing.
Charle
s could even see when the men ran out of ammunition, watching them drop their clip and load another one.
An explosion lit up the far left television, someone having thrown a grenade into the building. Fire and smoke rose at the bottom of the structure.
Charles glanced over at Titan; both men were standing almost shoulder to shoulder—though Titan’s was much higher than Charles’s.
His face held the same placid non interest.
“What do you think?”
“This is a very good job, Mr. Twaller.”
Charles nodded and looked at the man a second longer. Finally, he turned back to the television screens.
It was a very good job, no doubt about it. This might not be the largest attack against the Federal Government in terms of death count, but it certainly was in regards to the number of attackers.
Charles forced himself away from the televisions and turned back to the radios. He picked up the one on the far right.
“Are any reinforcements there yet?”
The higher the elevator rose, the more Christian heard. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he understood it was huge. It sounded like a war had started. War.
“What are you doing?”
Christian turned his head slowly, surprised to hear anyone inside the elevator—especially his own mother. She hadn’t spoken to him like this in years. None of his former apparitions showed themselves anymore, offering him advice. He had been alone, and yet here she was, standing in the corner of the elevator, ready to have a conversation.
“I’m going to help Simone,” he said, knowing that he was only talking to his own mind. It used to do this often, in order to help him make it through tough times.
“You’re going to help her, Christian? You can shoot that gun decently at best, and do you hear what’s happening, even through these concrete walls? How many men are up there shooting? What are you going to possibly be able to do?”
Christian turned away from her.
“Honey,” his mother said, “I’m not trying to be cruel, but you’ll die if you go through that door. Whatever is happening, one man can’t stop it.”
He ignored her, the same as he had the other inside his mansion. It didn’t matter what she said, nor that it might be similar to what his actual mother would say—he wasn’t leaving Simone up there. No possible way.
If that meant dying, okay. Preferable even.
The elevator doors opened and Christian saw the chaos for the first time. He had viewed chaos before, up close and with a lot at stake. He hadn’t panicked during those times, and he didn’t panic here either. He might never achieve the calm, almost reptilian mindset that Luke possessed at times like these, but a certain knowledge came over him: he had to keep his head if Simone was to live.
His gun was already raised as he looked through the smoke and shattered walls.
Christian ducked down and came out low, running for the opposite corner. He didn’t slow as he reached it, but slid his feet out from under him, landing on the smooth floor and sliding out until his left hand caught the corner, bringing him to a stop.
Tommy would be proud, he thought.
His mind took in everything, understanding the dangers around him and relaying them to his conscious self with perfect timing.
Christian rose to his feet, but stayed crouched. He looked out beyond the corner. Smoke was everywhere, and the smell of gunpowder was heavy in the air. The screams of the dying were everywhere, rising above the alarm’s insanely loud howl.
How could he find her in here, and where in the hell was back up?
He heard weapons discharging that lacked the heavy firepower from those outside, meaning other agents were now turning outward and defending themselves.
Christian looked into the lobby, trying to see through the destruction.
“You won’t be able to see anything from here.”
What in the hell? he wondered. It was Michael Hanson. Dr. Michael Hanson—the psychiatrist that Waverly still made him see. He’d never shown up as an apparition, not even once, and yet here he was giving advice.
Christian didn’t turn around and risk getting shot, he knew these apparitions would continue speaking regardless what he did.
“You’re going to need to get out front,” Hanson said.
“That’s where the risk is,” his mother said.
“Both of you shut up.”
They were right, though. Christian took off, his body bent over low, and made it to the back of the security station.
He dropped to his ass, his back sliding down the polished wooden credenza. Bullets flew through the air above him, some smashing into the very structure he hid behind. It was only a matter of time before one caught him in the lung.
He turned, kneeling, so that he faced the front of the building, and peeked over the top.
Christian could see outside, and his body—despite the war around him—grew cold at the sight.
Men were approaching (his mind immediately putting the number around fifty), nearing the shattered windows and doors, mowing down everything they saw. It looked like some apocalyptic nightmare, with the healthy coming to gun down the infected.
A bullet whizzed by Christian’s face, the sound of it ringing in his ear after it passed.
He scanned his sides, seeing others doing the same as him, only their guns were firing, trying to hit anyone they possibly could.
“There’s some cover,” Hanson said with the same detachment he always used in his sessions.
“Christian, be careful,” his mother said from the other side of him.
Christian dropped to his stomach and started crawling, his legs pushing him forward while he did his best to keep the gun in firing position.
He moved out from behind the security desk’s protective shield, seeing dead bodies and dying people around him. He moved past them as fast as he could, intent on finding one single person.
“SIMONE!” he shouted, hoping that she might hear his voice through the cacophony. “SIMONE, CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
He kept moving, his eyes scanning the room and his mind as close to a computer as any human would ever achieve—identifying and dissecting everything he saw.
“There,” Hanson said from his side, now crawling too. “Someone moving.”
Christian saw her immediately, and needed nothing else. That was Simone’s red hair and she was crawling, though not in the right direction. She was heading to the wall on the opposite side of the building.
Christian headed toward her.
Simone knew nothing except that she needed to keep moving. If she did that, if she kept her body’s momentum going forward, she would eventually find safety. If she stopped, she died.
She was finally crying—sobbing actually, though not from fear. The smoke was too much, even down on the floor. She could barely see anything, but she couldn’t stop to wipe at the tears dripping down her face. That would halt her progress. It would be death.
Her hand touched someone’s leg, a wet meaty thing, clearly where a bullet had ripped through.
She didn’t care, just pushed it out of the way, acting more animal than human.
Simone crept crawling and the time felt endless, each inch truly a mile in her mind.
Finally, she screamed.
A hand grabbed her ankle and roughly pulled her back, her hands stretching out in front of her. She kicked without looking, feeling something hard beneath her foot as she did. The hand released and she scurried forward, desperately wanting to get away from whatever it was.
She moved forward a few feet before the hand clamped down again, and this time she felt another come immediately after, grabbing her free leg. She was pulled roughly and fast, all the way back.
“SIMONE, STOP!”
She turned her head at the sound of the voice, and through the smoke and fear, she saw Christian.
“STAY DOWN AND FOLLOW ME!”
Simone did no such thing. She reached out and hugged her troubled frie
nd, joy surging through her.
Christian wasn’t ready for the embrace, but it came with a mugger’s force. Simone wrapped him in her arms and pulled him close, both of them lying like lovers on the ground.
“Okay, okay,” he said, forcing her away. “We’ve got to go.” His voice was softer, as she could hear him now and wasn’t kicking in his face.
Blood was leaking from his nose but he didn’t feel any pain; his adrenaline was coursing too fast.
“Come on. That way.” He pointed in the opposite direction and then shoved her forward, changing his mind about her following him.
They started crawling, moving past the dead without granting them a glance.
Something exploded behind them, and Simone stopped momentarily, turning around to look, but he shoved again—forcing her onward in a way he would have never done otherwise.
Christian didn’t know where safety lay in this place, but he knew where they were going—back to subbasement C. Back to Tommy and the small family he had in this place. If he was going to die, he’d do it there, with them.
They moved another fifty feet before Christian heard the sweetest sound in his life.
Heavy artillery fire from a helicopter high above.
“It’s over,” Luke said. He saw the helicopter and watched as its 30mm rounds hammered down into the world beneath. “Few of your men will live.”
“I know.”
Some had fled a few minutes before, understanding that they’d overstayed their welcome.
The helicopters began arriving on all the screens, SWAT teams showing up in heavily armored vehicles as well.
Luke watched the screens go black as Charles hit the off button on the remote controls. He turned and looked at the fat man. He held a two-way radio to his face, and was speaking into it.
“Retreat if possible. We’ll be in contact.”
He turned the first radio off and picked up the second.
