by Hal Bodner
Some of them are simply bat-shit crazy. And vicious. And seeking revenge against anyone who has thwarted them in the past; anyone like the Whirlwind. They’d get a kick out of using Peter to get to me. Knowing what some of those loons are capable of, my mind balks at what could happen if they discovered the connection between us. Travis and I take every precaution to make sure that no one ever sees me exiting the Archer Agency’s building in my superhero drag. We’re even more careful about not letting any of the bad guys find out about Peter, so even in the direst emergencies, the Whirlwind rarely comes and goes from Ale Mary’s, the old nightclub where Peter and I live.
There’s an abandoned subway tunnel that runs underneath both my office building and the club. Roughly midway between the two lies a warehouse that Travis picked up cheap. It used to house the Drinky-Winks Soda Pop Company. Before that, it was the Dirty Doings Diaper Depot, a laundry that catered to new mothers in the days before disposables were invented. I’ve always suspected that the lingering odor might be the reason the soft drink company folded. The only thing worse than drinking overly sweet carbonated water might be drinking overly sweet carbonated water that tastes faintly of baby shit.
I darted through the tunnel and emerged from a concealed door in the side of the Drinky-Winks building that opens onto an alley. Even through the press of the tall buildings looming on both sides, I saw oily black smoke darkening the sky.
At a trot that was faster than most professional track athletes could run full-out, I was halfway across town in mere minutes. As I got closer to the disaster zone, I had to slow down in order to shoulder my way through the crowd of lookie-loos who were gathered behind the police barriers and pointing up at the building with unsuppressed excitement. The Whirlwind’s costume is bright turquoise with yellow piping; it’s pretty hard to miss. Yet even though most of the onlookers knew exactly who I was and, presumably, why I was there, they still refused to get out of the way. A few even had the gall to ask me for an autograph which just goes to prove that some people have absolutely no sense of occasion.
I finally pushed my way up to the police barrier. The days when I needed to alert Police Chief Gretchen Thatcher that I was on the scene were long behind me. One of her officers would have already spotted the flash of turquoise and let her know I was around.
I looked up at the conflagration, which was still going strong. Though the Special Projects building was certainly no skyscraper, it was still pretty high. I had no idea how I was going to put out a fire of this size and save any people who were trapped inside–especially if they were on the higher floors. But I didn’t let that bother me much. Once I got inside, I knew something would occur to me.
Something always does.
Well, almost always.
Chapter Three
“My god! All those people! Those poor, poor people!”
Jackson had one hand clapped over his mouth in horror; his eyes remained riveted to the television screen.
“Does anyone have any idea how it happened?”
“First guess is that it was an explosion in the main labs on the fifth floor. We’re not absolutely sure yet.”
With his back to the duty nurse, Peter Camry surreptitiously filled the plastic water tumbler with scotch from a pint-sized silver flask, and handed the drink to his boss. The doctors had advised the old man against drinking alcohol, but given the prognosis, Jackson ignored them. The single-malt could hardly do much more damage to his ravaged system and, since he was dying anyway, Jackson didn’t particularly care if it did. He’d spent a lifetime trying to unlock Nature’s secrets, using Her bounty to create new pharmaceuticals and to advance biomedical science, all at the expense of paying attention to his own health. Looking back across a career that had provided so many benefits to humanity, he didn’t regret a single fever or ague, not one parasite or infection. If that was the price he had to pay for the betterment of Mankind, so be it.
His only regret was that there was still so much more to do, so many new discoveries to make. So many projects that he would never see to completion.
“I got the company helicopter into the air as soon as I heard.” Peter interrupted the old man’s reverie. “They’ve been taking people off the roof. But they don’t know how long they can keep it up. The heat’s getting worse and they tell me there are…updrafts?”
Jackson nodded and clutched his glass of scotch in a white-knuckled hand. “I know what they are. Go on.”
“It’s getting harder to land but the pilots are doing their best. On the ground though…” Peter shook his head sadly.
“The Founder’s Day parade!” Jackson’s eyes widened.
Since they’d started watching the news, the cameras had been focusing more on the burning building than on the crowds below.
“Chief Thatcher cleared the area as soon as she could. Most of the spectators fled but…”
His voice trailed off and Jackson thought he saw a sorrow that mirrored his own in the younger man’s eyes.
“But…what?”
“A chunk of the building’s facade came down before anyone knew what was happening. I’m afraid…well…it crushed the grandstand, Jackson. I’m sorry.”
Greene felt his mouth grow dry and had to swish some of the scotch around to moisten his tongue before he could continue. “We sponsored that parade. Our people…” He swallowed again, dry, this time. “Who…? Who did we lose?”
Peter was reluctant to speak.
“Please, Peter. I must know.”
Peter sighed and dropped into a chair. Once again, his eyes roved over the frantic messages scrolling across his phone’s screen but he already knew what they said. There was no point in delaying any further.
“Mallory Foster and Jacob Eisenberg are confirmed dead.”
“My god! My god!” Jackson kept repeating throughout the recitation.
“Ambrose Cole is missing. We should assume the worst. Fortunately, Gary Montague was held up in traffic and didn’t get there until after the explosion. He’s been texting me from the site as he gets new information. Prudence was badly burned. She’s been taken to hospital but…” He shrugged, sadly. “She may not survive.”
“And Herman?”
Peter couldn’t suppress a snort. It was no secret that Herman Starcke, the Greene Genes CFO, despised him.
“Sorry.” He blushed apologetically at Jackson’s stern glance. “Herman was against sponsoring the parade from the beginning. Lucky for him, he was boycotting it. Lucky for us, they wanted to keep you here a few extra days. Otherwise…”
“You and I would have been there too.” Jackson shook his head. “I should have been there,” he spat bitterly. “Seventy-nine years old with only a few months left. It should have been me instead of the others. They had so much more to contribute to the world whereas I…”
“Stop it, Jackson.” Peter’s harsh tone cut through the other man’s misery.
Peter had no doubt that Jackson would have willingly thrown himself into the pyre if it meant the others could have been saved; the old man was truly that altruistic. Given the current crisis, neither of them could afford to succumb to emotion. Herman Starcke certainly wouldn’t. Everything Jackson had worked for–everything Peter had worked for–was in too much jeopardy. At the moment, grief would be an indulgence.
He rose to place a reassuring hand on the old man’s shoulder.
“Your death would have only made things worse. The cost in human loss is, of course, terribly steep. But the loss of your vision…” He gently squeezed and felt the wasted muscle beneath his fingers. “Greene Genes still needs you for whatever time you have left. Especially now.”
“Nonsense. You’re quite capable of rebuilding without me, Peter. Almost half the board–gone! Old friends, all of them,” he moaned.
“I wasn’t talking about that.” There was worse news to come and Peter felt an obligation to break it to him as gently as possible. Jackson waited while Peter resumed his seat.
“
I had hoped…we had hoped…” the young man continued.
He wasn’t exactly sure what effect the news would have and he proceeded cautiously, just in case. He needed to tell his boss what had happened, but he wanted to phrase it in such a way that Jackson would agree to the solution Peter had devised.
“Yes?”
“I know how much you’d hoped to witness the success of the Feed the World Project. We were so close.”
Understanding dawned. “The labs,” Jackson whispered with deep angst.
Peter Camry nodded. “Brad Harmon is gone. He got back into town last night. The explosion happened first thing this morning.”
“Is there any chance…?”
“How long have you known Brad? Can you imagine him being so much as five minutes late on his first day back at work? We had to practically browbeat him to take the damned vacation in the first place.” Peter chuckled, but there was no mirth in it. “No, I’m afraid he perished along with everything else.”
“What about his research? I had him to dinner the night before he left for Tahiti. He spent half the meal trying to get me to let him cancel the trip, and the rest of it babbling about some major breakthrough he’d made.”
“Did he give you any details?”
Jackson waved his hand to dismiss the notion. “Bradley? Hardly. He never said anything until he was damned good and ready. Just hints and teases. You know how he was. All I got from it was that, with luck, within a decade we might be able to end world hunger once and for all.” A thought occurred to him. “Surely we have back-ups of everything?”
“Yes.” Peter was reluctant to meet Jackson’s gaze. “And no.”
“What do you mean?” Jackson Greene’s aura of command, though weakened by illness, was still formidable, “Dammit, Peter. Look at me.”
Camry fidgeted. To Jackson’s eye, it looked incongruous on someone who was usually so self-composed. Peter’s fingers fluttered against his phone screen while his boss waited impatiently for an answer.
“We have most of the background information. It’s standard operating procedure to store copies of everything that Special Projects does off-site.”
“On the mainframe in the basement of the corporate building. Yes, yes. I know that.”
“Bradley, though, well, he was never one to pay much attention to procedure.” Peter spread his hands helplessly. “We’ve only just started checking but, so far, it doesn’t look like he made any recent entries into the system. My guess is that he kept all the new data on his personal laptop.”
“He always was a stubborn cuss,” Jackson muttered with affection.
“He wasn’t working in a vacuum, so he must have shared some of it with his staff. But he never let the right hand know what the left one was doing. Not that it matters now.” Peter shook his head. “He scheduled a staff meeting for this morning. I guess he wanted reports on what’s been happening while he was away. They were all there. With their computers. I’m sorry Jackson. Whatever inspiration he had, it’s gone now.”
“The loss,” the old man moaned. “Not just to those poor people who died in this…this…horrible accident but, to the world! What are we going to do?”
He struggled not to sob. Peter sat by, looking at him with sympathy until Jackson had control of his emotions once again. The younger man cleared his throat softly a few times before proceeding. He’d been planning this moment for months, waiting for the right opportunity to bring up the subject. Given Jackson’s condition, it was now or never.
“Actually, I’ve been wondering how to talk to you about this for a while and, well, this disaster forces my hand.”
He paused as if uncertain, or even afraid, to continue. Again, Greene found this unusual behavior for his protegee; he’d never known Peter to hesitate about anything. In fact, the young man’s ability to think quickly and make decisions in a crisis, decisions which, more often than not, ended up being the correct ones, were some of the qualities Jackson most admired in him.
“You may think this terribly callous of me.” Camry motioned toward the tragedy playing out on the television screen. “I’m just as upset as anyone else about what’s just happened. But I can’t afford to give in to grief. We can’t afford it. I’m not talking about money. The greater good of humanity is at stake.”
“Go on.”
Peter dropped to one knee, and took one of Jackson’s hands into his own. Backslapping and youthful locker room horseplay notwithstanding, Jackson had never been comfortable with physical intimacy between men. That he was aware of Peter’s sexual persuasion, though the two of them had never discussed it openly, made it even harder to avoid flinching. Nevertheless, he was reasonably sure he’d never revealed how awkward it made him feel to his protegee.
“Let me take over the project.”
“What?” Whatever Jackson had expected, this was certainly not it. “Why in heaven’s name would you want to do that? Without Bradley, it’s doomed.”
“Stop being so negative,” Peter chided with a hint of a rueful grin. “I know you want me to take the helm when…well…when…”
“When I die. You needn’t mince words. I’m not happy about it but there’s nothing I can do. I’ve never made a secret about who I want to take my place. I can go to my grave happy, knowing you’ll be faithful to my vision.”
“That’s just it.”
Jackson wasn’t sure he approved of how quickly Peter wanted to discuss business, not with the carnage still taking place only blocks away. Nevertheless, he understood passion, especially the passion for discovery; it had driven him for most of his life.
“As of today,” Peter continued, “there are vacant seats on the board. You know as well as I do that Herman’s already girding his loins and preparing for battle. He’ll want to fill them with his people. Herman Starcke doesn’t care about benefitting mankind. He’s motivated strictly by profits.”
Jackson Greene, for all his visionary attributes and, some might say, his naivete about making the world a better place, was far from a stupid man. Though he’d never before been faced with a setback quite as devastating as the cataclysm they were witnessing, he was no stranger to disaster. He forced his grief into abeyance long enough to assess the situation as objectively as he could.
“With Mallory, Ambrose, and Jacob gone…” he mused.
“And very probably Prudence.”
“Herman still has a power base but…”
“…It’s not as strong,” Peter finished for him. “Those board vacancies are key. If I could somehow manage to pull Feed the World out of the fire…”
Peter’s face flushed and he started to stammer as soon as he realized he’d been tactless given what they were watching. Jackson smiled grimly to let him know he understood there was no ill intent behind the words.
“I mean…I already have some ideas on how to salvage this. If I can do it…”
“Success goes a long way with any board. Inheriting my stock interest won’t hurt either.”
“I can carry out your vision, Jackson.” Peter’s eyes lit with a zealot’s glow. “You may not be here to see it, but you can imagine it. No one need go hungry ever again! After that, there’s the Ocean Reclamation program. Research to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria. All those clean fuel projects that have been languishing. If I can make Feed the World work, no one will pay any attention to Herman’s nay-saying. We could finally do the things we’ve always dreamed of.”
“Make absolutely sure you want to do this, my boy.” There was doubt in Greene’s voice. “If you fail…”
“I will not fail you, sir. I swear!”
Jackson Greene remained lost in thought for several moments. In the end, he couldn’t deny Peter the opportunity to prove himself. Besides, to the young man’s credit, he had never failed to come through before, often to Jackson’s surprise.
“Very well. But first…” He held up a single finger to stress the point he was about to make. “You get down to that accident site and see
what you can do to help.” He saw Peter’s reluctance to leave him and added, “I’ll be fine. Reviving Feed the World is going to take a minor miracle. Start showing me what miracles you can work by doing your best to help as many of those poor souls as possible. Now go.”
Peter Camry was out the door in a flash. Jackson Greene took a deep breathe, trying to hold himself together. But within seconds of his gaze returning to the television screen, the old man began to sob.
Chapter Four
The courtyard of the Special Projects Building was engulfed in chaos. Fortunately, Gretchen’s cops had confined the onlookers behind barriers placed well back from the chunks of flaming wreckage that were still tumbling down from five floors above. Very little remained of the grandstand but a heap of splintered wood, crushed metal and torn bunting. Even as I watched, the rescuers were forced to pause their search for the injured and the dead because a huge chunk of concrete fell from above to obliterate what was left of the bleachers. The street leading to the courtyard had been turned into an impromptu triage area and the EMTs had their hands full.
In spite of how well organized the first responders were, there were still panicked people running around like chickens with their heads cut off, either too terrified or too stupid to worry about dodging debris. A sporadic exodus of shell-shocked Greene Genes employees trickled out of the building’s main entrance, many of them assisting more severely burned and injured coworkers to safety, while others raced pell-mell into the courtyard, their heads covered with their hand, their laptops, coats, or sheaves of paper, as if any of them would provide protection from the crumbling debris above them. A few people were huddled on the curb in fetal positions, while others wandered aimlessly, ignoring barked orders from the police to stand clear of the building. One woman stood ramrod straight with her fists clenched at her sides, screaming at the top of her lungs. All the veins in her neck stood out from the strain of maintaining the volume.
