by Andrew Mayne
“A few. I saw some cuts on their faces and a lot of bloody knuckles.”
“From what?” asked Simmons.
“Trying to get him out of the cab, according to the people in the diner.”
“Who uses their forehead to try to smash open a window?” She pointed to a bloody print on the metal bracing around the windshield. “Or beats their hands into a pulp smashing a steel frame?”
Rios shrugged. “I’ve seen that lots of times.”
“On someone who wasn’t psychotic or on drugs?”
“Well ....”
“Me neither. Let me ask you another question. When you saw the men back there, what made you think it was Mitchell Roberts? Was it the statements from the people in the diner? And I’m not talking about the fact that we’re only two miles away from one of the stakeouts.”
Rios got her point. “The injuries on their faces. They reminded me of this morning and the mall.”
“What can we say about the injuries here and at the mall as far as cause?”
Rios nodded. “For the most part, they were self-inflicted while they were pursuing the suspect. He paused for a moment. “So you think the injuries this morning were self-inflicted, as well?”
“It would seem to fit the pattern. All of the injuries were the result of chasing Roberts,” said Simmons.
Rios shook his head. His mind went back to the grisly scene at the escalator and the people who fell off the roof. “You saw what happened back at the mall. Who in their right mind would let that happen?”
“Someone scared, Rios. Someone running for their life who can’t stop to look back.”
Simmons pointed to the bloody knuckle prints on the hood and then took a step back from the wrecked tractor-trailer truck. “These people weren’t chasing the devil. He was running from it.”
31
Steinmetz looked up from the computer display and wiped his eyes. He hoped it was just the fatigue. He knew that was wishful thinking. He looked over at the 30-year-old man with thick dark hair and a perpetual five o’clock shadow sitting next to him.
“You’ve double checked these, Nick?” he asked him.
“I checked four times and seven samples. All show the same kind of elevated peptides.” He leaned over and touched the tip of his pen to the screen. “You can see the spike on neurokinin C here.”
Steinmetz took off his glasses and wiped his eyes again, as was his habit when he felt stressed. He’d been doing it a lot lately.
His lab assistant, Nick Arturous, hesitated to speak. Finally, he couldn’t hold it in any longer. “It looks like ....”
“I know what it looks like, Nick.” Steinmetz came across much harsher than he meant to.
“But Great Wall was supposed to stop this.”
“Great Wall was rushed.”
“Maybe, this is what it looks like when it works?” asked Nick hopefully.
“Maybe. Maybe. I got to call the big man. Go back and ask Selena to help you run everything through the sequencer. I want to send it through our internal gene bank.”
Nick nodded and then closed the door behind him as he left.
Steinmetz picked up the phone and called Baylor.
After going through a forwarding center, he picked up after two rings.
“What is it, Ari?” asked Baylor.
“It’s not good, Steven.”
“It can’t be Mongolian Flu.”
“It’s not. We couldn’t find any variant there. We’re looking again. It’s just that it shows all the symptoms of Mongolian after it recedes. All the elevated peptides. Neurokinin. It’s all there.”
“Fuck,” said Baylor. “Is it a variant of some kind?”
“We’re looking right now to see if our screener was too imprecise and miss-called it. But I’m skeptical,” said Steinmetz. “We have to consider the possibility that ....”
“No,” said Baylor, interrupting him. “That’s technically impossible.”
“Well ....”
“Ari, listen to me. That’s not an option. For all we know, this could be Great Wall doing what it’s supposed to do.” Baylor paused. “One of the things we looked into was the possibility of using the same mechanism that Mongolian Flu did in an airborne solution. For crowd control.”
This was news to Steinmetz. “Good lord, Steven, what kind of crowd would you be trying to control?”
Baylor ignored the question. “We have to consider the possibility that someone else had the same idea. You could bypass the virus altogether and create a biological agent that would cause the same reaction as long as people were exposed to it. Turn it off and the reaction stops.”
“Do we tell DHS about this?”
Baylor thought for a moment. “I’m going to send a containment team down there. We’ll hold off for now so we can protect the integrity of Great Wall. Since we have no reason to think it’s an infectious agent, it’s not that serious.”
Steinmetz had seen the news reports of what happened in the mall earlier that day. He was afraid to find out what Baylor thought was “serious.”
“We need to be there when they apprehend this man and make sure the right precautions are taken with whatever kind of dispersant he was using,” said Baylor.
“Is there a chance we could get a blood sample from the man?”
“After we catch him, certainly.”
“No, I mean is there one now?” asked Steinmetz.
“Not that I’m aware of. Why?”
“I just wanted to cross-check something involving Great Wall.”
“Forget about Great Wall, Ari. I need you to look at those blood samples and find some kind of evidence of a dispersant. We need to figure out how it got into their systems. I’ll call back in a couple hours. I’m going to take a jet down there to meet up with the containment team.” Baylor hung up.
Steinmetz put the phone down and walked back into the lab. He called one of the assistants over.
“Selena, can you do a search in the blood database for Mitchell Roberts? I’d like to see if we have access to a sample anywhere.”
“The official one? Or Backdoor?”
The Backdoor database was an index Steinmetz had helped develop for Baylor. Using genetic fingerprinting, it matched blood samples from known donors with anonymous donors and had a prediction algorithm that could calculate the likelihood of someone being related to other individuals in the database. Even if someone had never given a blood sample, they could often trace a drop of blood back to a specific person if their family members had ever donated blood. The database was not only a secret known to just a few people outside the lab, it was highly illegal. Steinmetz only used it sparingly.
“Use Backdoor, Selena.”
32
Mitchell drove the boat for a half-hour up the Intracoastal and then down a canal. He tied it off to a tree next to a highway. He climbed out of the boat and looked over the concrete embankment that separated the highway from the canal. Across the road he could see the 24-hour box store, Super Center, that he was looking for.
Before he went into total hiding, he needed a few more things. It was a calculated risk but one he needed to take if he were going to avoid human contact until things sorted out. Whatever that meant.
He waited until there were no cars coming or going on the road and then ran across. He came to a small hill that ran along the front of the parking lot and looked over the hedge that topped it. He counted fourteen cars in the parking lot. Usually there was some kind of rent-a-cop driving a car around. Mitchell spotted him at the far end of the mall parked near the other entrance.
If Mitchell walked normally past the car, he could get inside without too much trouble. Just as long as the window wasn’t down.
Before he went shopping, he needed to take care of something while he was in the parking lot. Mitchell found an opening in the hedge and walked over to one of the cars. Making sure that nobody was looking, he knelt down by the license plate and pulled out a fishing knife he found on
the boat.
Using the flat edge, he unfastened the screws holding the license plate onto the car. Mitchell tucked the plate under his jacket into his back waistband. He walked over to another car and did the same thing. He wanted to get as many license plates as he could but settled for one more.
He had no plans to use them. He just wanted to give his pursuers a strong reason to believe he’d stolen a car. The multiple missing plates would frustrate their search for him.
He tucked the third plate behind the others and stood up. The security vehicle was still in the same spot. Mitchell looked to make sure that there was no one else in the parking lot and walked toward the nearer entrance. If he saw anyone coming through the doors toward him, he readied himself to run around the side of the building.
Through the glass doors he could see an old man in a red vest working as the Super Center’s door greeter, their polite term for shoplifting deterrent. Mitchell knew there was no way around the man. He was counting on the fact that once the man noticed him he’d abandon his post.
Mitchell tried to remember the layout of the store so he could get everything he needed as quickly as possible. Mitchell took a deep breath, smoothed back his hair and then walked through the main entrance. Mitch entered the store.
He tried to pass as far away from the old man as he could, but it didn’t matter. Two seconds after Mitch walked through the door, the man’s teeth were bared and his eyes narrowed on Mitch .
Mitch kept walking. “Take it easy, old-timer. I don’t want you to have a heart attack.”
The old man lunged toward him. Mitch walked faster, easily outpacing the old man as he tried to move toward him as fast as his arthritic legs could take him. Mitch kept going straight down the aisle and then darted to the right in the hardware section. He searched the shelves for what he needed. The old man rounded the corner as Mitch found it.
Mitch jogged around the shelves and headed back down the aisle toward the back. He ripped open the container and pulled out what he needed.
When the footsteps grew fast behind Mitch, he broke into a light run. He didn’t want to attract attention from anybody else in the store. From behind him he could hear the old man let out a low-pitched groan. Mitch increased his speed and headed for the men’s bathroom at the back of the store.
Down an aisle he caught sight of a young couple with a shopping basket looking at DVDs. Mitch didn’t know how far whatever made people attack him worked, but he was sure he was going to have to deal with them after the old man.
The footsteps were getting closer. Mitch reached the bathroom and pushed the door open. He quickly ran around the back of the door and waited. The old man ran in after him a few seconds later and charged into the center of the bathroom.
Mitch slipped around the door and pulled it shut behind him. The old man started to pound on the door. Mitch couldn’t hold it shut forever. Somebody was going to come sooner or later when they heard the noise the man was making.
Mitch pushed the door open slightly and a clawed hand came at his face. He slid a zip tie around the hand and then attached it to the one he’d fastened to the door handle. He cinched them both tight, fastening the old man to the door. It might hurt the man’s wrist if he fought it, but it would keep him at a safe distance.
Mitch walked back toward the sporting goods section and grabbed a few things: a wooden baseball bat, a paintball gun and extra ammo. He found a large duffle bag and shoved them inside. He ran over to the camping section and started shoving freeze-dried food packages into the duffle bag. He grabbed a few other camping tools and then went to another aisle.
From behind he could hear the sound of two pairs of footsteps running toward him. Mitch looked over his shoulder and saw the girl and her boyfriend going full speed.
Mitch ran away from them and turned down an aisle that led to the toy department. He turned into what he thought was the right aisle but realized he’d made a mistake. He ran down the aisle and turned around the next end.
Mitch scanned the shelves for what he needed. He knew it was a borderline stupid idea. He just wanted to try it before he used the baseball bat. He’d hurt enough people that day.
The rage-filled couple came around the corner and closed in on him. Mitch ripped open the bag of marbles and threw them on the floor. The man and the woman tripped and skidded across the smooth tile. The man’s head smacked into a metal shelf. The girl fell face first. Mitch ripped open two more bags and scattered them around the couple as they tried to get up.
He shoved some more bags of marbles into his bag and ran back to the gun section of the store. Mitch found a shelf filled with pepper spray canisters and began shoving them into his bag. He popped the safety off one and held on to it.
Mitch ran back to the hardware section and grabbed a few more things. At the other end of the store, he could hear the sound of merchandise being dropped and footsteps hurrying in his direction.
It was time to go. Mitch headed back to the center aisle and ran toward the exit the old man had abandoned. A heavy-set woman in a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops was running at him, rolls of body fat shaking like a hula skirt. Behind her was her pig-tailed 7-year-old daughter in hot pursuit. Both pairs of eyes were bloodshot.
He ran to the right into the clothing section and started weaving through the racks. Another man in a red vest came running at Mitch from behind a row of shelves.
Mitch sprayed the man in the eyes with the pepper spray. The man let out a roar but didn’t stop coming after him. He was blinded but kept swinging his arms around. Mitch knocked over two clothing racks to trip the man up.
He looked to his left and saw the mother getting close. Mitch aimed a cloud of pepper spray at her and then tipped over a rack in her path. She went sprawling across the ground.
Mitch looked around. He couldn’t see the little girl because she was shorter than the racks. There was the sound of little footsteps coming from somewhere, but he couldn’t see where.
Mitch moved away from the man and the little girl’s mother and headed toward the exit. Suddenly he felt a searing pain in the back of his thigh as the little girl bit him.
“Fuck!” Mitch jerked around and tried to kick the girl away without being too harsh. She just attacked his leg. Mitch looked at the can of pepper spray. He couldn’t do it.
From the moment he entered, he knew there were surveillance cameras watching. At some point authorities would see everything he did in the store.
He couldn’t bring himself to hurt the little girl any more than was necessary. Mitch kept pushing her away with his leg. He pulled a zip tie from his pocket and grabbed one of the girl’s wrists.
He yanked her into a clothes rack before she could bite into his arm. He wrapped the zip tie around her tiny wrist and strapped her to the metal curtain bar on the clothes rack. Once he was confident she wouldn’t chase after him as he left the store, Mitch ran toward the exit. The little girl snarled and spit.
He could hear more footsteps behind him. He caught a glimpse of two cashiers and four customers running at him. Mitch pulled out another bag of marbles and ripped it open. He tossed the bag over his head.
He could hear the sound of several bodies hitting the ground. There were still more footsteps. He threw down another bag of marbles. A pair of footsteps still came after him.
Mitch didn’t want to be followed back to the boat. He turned around the corner that led to the exit and pulled the baseball bat out of the duffle bag.
As soon as he was around the other side of the wall, he knelt down and stuck the baseball bat out to trip whoever was behind him. A man in a sheriff’s deputy uniform ran past the corner and tripped on the bat. He skidded across the floor on his face.
Not another cop, thought Mitch. He had no choice. He took the can of pepper spray from the bag. Mitch walked over and sprayed the man at point blank as he tried to get up. Mitchell started to sneeze from being so close to the spray.
The deputy screamed out and tried to claw
at anything he could. Mitch ran through the automatic sliding glass doors and into the parking lot. He saw the deputy sheriff’s car parked up on the curb.
Christ, that guy got here fast, thought Mitchell. He looked out at the parking lot. It still looked the same as when he came in, with the exception of the flashing blue light from the empty police car. Mitchell ran toward the far end of the lot.
As he reached the hedge on top of the hill that separated the mall parking lot from the highway, he saw three police cars racing toward his direction with their lights flashing. Mitchell ducked down behind the hedge and tried to figure out what to do next.
The police cars pulled into the parking lot and headed toward the front of the store. While their attention was on the front of the store, Mitchell decided now was the best time to make a break for it.
He climbed over the hedge and looked for traffic. The road was clear. Mitchell ran across the highway and climbed over the concrete wall. He found the spot where he tied his boat to a tree and threw the duffle bag filled with stolen goods inside.
Mitchell untied the rope from the tree and shoved off. He didn’t want to get caught next to shore as he tried to get the engine going. He’d be too vulnerable like that.
When the boat was ten feet away from shore, he gave the starting cord a pull. It took him three tries. Finally, it started. Mitchell aimed the bow away from the store and headed up the canal and back toward the Intracoastal waterway. It wasn’t uncommon for police to call in a police boat unit when they thought a suspect might be on or near water. Mitchell kept the boat going as fast as he could without attracting too much attention.
As he entered the main waterway, he looked back and saw the police helicopter over the Super Center shining its spotlight into the parking lot below.
Mitchell reached into the back of his pants and pulled out the license plates. He looked at the numbers and letters and then tossed them into the water, where they sank to the bottom.
Mitchell steered the little boat toward a large drawbridge that connected the inland part of the city to the beach. There was one more errand Mitch had to do that night.
