CHAPTER FIVE
Simon ran down the alley alongside the NEC. His heart was pumping past redline and his legs were heating up. Cramps would take over soon if he couldn’t find a way to give his pursuers the slip. He glanced over his shoulder and saw at least two dozen people chasing him now, led by the young athletic man who’d run into the street vendor a few minutes earlier. They were closing ground.
Where were they all coming from?
They couldn’t all be members of the victims’ families, could they?
He regretted letting his physical condition deteriorate the past twenty-four months, which seemed fitting given his rundown appearance and broken heart. Volunteering at local homeless shelters wasn’t exactly a good source of cardio, and neither was swinging a hammer for the good folks at Habitat for Humanity. He’d made a few friends along the way, including a peculiar teenager named Emily and her kleptomaniac of a friend, Junie. But they were in the desert southwest, too far away to help.
His mind drifted as he continued the agonizing sprint, figuring he would soon be joining his wife Tessa in the afterlife. Her face filled his mind and her words rang in his head.
“It wasn’t me, Simon! I didn’t do it! You have to believe me! Why don’t you believe me? I could never do something like this. Never in a million years.”
She was guilty, he told himself. He’d seen the video. Everyone had. Still, he couldn’t shake the last set of broken syllables she’d said to the camera.
“Simon . . . help . . . me. I love . . . you, darling with . . . all my heart.”
The words felt like acid rain dripping on the petals of his heart, burning a hole deep inside. Just then, he heard footsteps behind him, snapping him out of the waking memory.
“You can’t hide, Redfall!”
“Time to pay, asshole!”
“We’re going to send you to hell with your bitch wife!”
He came to a cross street, slowing to a jog. He could see it led to a massive iron gate patrolled by armed guards—the back entrance to the NEC. Two hundred yards away in the opposite direction was a busy thoroughfare. Red, yellow, blue and green GoogleCabs rushed by, interspersed by the occasional black police cruiser and long, white DC Metrobuses. A hundred yards in front of him, the alley ended at a moderate-sized boulevard with a wide, grassy central median that looked like it emptied into a park.
Bushes and trees, he thought, before looking back. The gang on his tail was fifty yards away and closing. They’d be on him in seconds if he didn’t pick up the pace, which he did.
His lungs were burning and his side was starting to ache, but he convinced his body to keep going. He focused all his thoughts on his legs, pushing them to their tripping point.
Before his lungs could suck in another rush of air, a huge shadow rolled in over the area, casting a reddish glow over everything. Simon craned his neck at the sky and saw massive blood-red clouds circling the city, rolling over themselves like a time-lapse video of a swirling storm.
The sky had been perfectly clear only moments before, and now this?
His feet stopped on their own, allowing his eyes to take in the phenomenon more easily. He’d never seen anything like it before. The redness covered the sky in every direction. How could they have built up so fast?
“What’s the matter, Redfall, you looking for God?” one of the male pursuers said into his ear.
The words brought him out of the trance, only to find he was surrounded. The hesitation had cost him.
The young athletic man stepped forward with a clenched jaw and fire in his eyes.
“What do you want from me?” Simon asked, already knowing the answer.
“Retribution,” he said, punching Simon in the jaw.
Simon staggered and his vision turned red, but he didn’t fall. “I’m sorry for what she did. But this isn’t going to change anything,” he said through the pain, spitting a patch of blood on the ground.
“Your wife deserved to die! So do you!” the burly man yelled, coming at him with a short piece of two-by-four in his hands. “I want you to feel my pain, Redfall.”
Simon put his arm up to shield his head from the worst of the blow, but the force still knocked him sideways. He staggered again, shocked at the man’s strength.
Before he could whirl around and bring his fists to bear, someone landed a punch on his kidney. He doubled over as the rest of the mob closed in. Someone kicked him in the back of the knee, dropping him to the ground. He felt kicks and blows raining down on his body from all directions.
He curled into a ball, covered his head, and closed his eyes. He might have been able to stand up and get a few punches in before they ended him, but Simon decided to lie there and take the punishment. He figured he deserved it for what his wife had done and for not finding a way to stop her. Her sins were his sins. He should have noticed something was off with her and found a way to protect the innocents. Their blood was on his hands, just as if he’d been the one pulling the trigger that day.
Then, out of nowhere, the beating stopped in an instant when the sky opened up and it started to rain. But not just any rain; this precipitation brought with it a foul smell. The kind that makes you want to turn your head away.
He opened his eyes and tried to look around, but all he could see was red dripping across his vision. He thought at first it was blood. He pulled his shirt to his eyes and wiped them clean, but when he opened them again, everything was still red.
Not blood, he decided, plus it didn’t smell like blood. More like rotten eggs mixed with a dirty ashtray.
The people surrounding him stood with craned necks, staring at the sky with looks of bewilderment on their mugs and hands covering their noses and mouths. It was a sludgy, putrid-smelling rain—a red rain—something straight out of a science fiction novel. They were covered in it and so was everything around them—the street, the buildings, the cars. One of them gagged and another puked, sending the rest of the mob into a coughing fit.
Simon hated the odor, too, but it wasn’t making him sick. He didn’t understand their overreaction, but perhaps they were more susceptible to it. Then again, it may have been his extensive military and intelligence training kicking in. His mind was strong and so was his body, honed through years of practice.
Above the steady hiss of the drops, the roar of an engine and the squeal of tires came at him, originating from the boulevard to the south. A few seconds later, a cargo van slid to a stop at the edge of the crowd, and the side door flew open. The young girl from outside the theater—the one in the black hoodie with the red hair and bright blue eyes—called to him.
“Redfall! Quick! Get in!”
“Me?”
“No, the other Simon Redfall! Yes, you, genius!”
He froze, trying to think it through.
“Get in before these people remember they were in the middle of beating you to death!” she screamed at him.
Simon came to his senses. He limped with aching ribs through the stunned crowd, stumbling to the all-white van. The girl slammed the door shut behind him after he crawled in head-first. The driver—a teenage boy—gunned the engine, sending the van forward in a lurch as they sped off.
CHAPTER SIX
Jeffrey Hansen, founder and CEO of RaineTech, paced back and forth behind the single technician seated at the control console, waiting for an answer. His eyes floated up out of boredom, looking at the curved ceiling with a prideful gaze. It was made of thick Plexiglas, reinforced by organic polymers created by RaineTech for use in the newest class of US Navy submarines. The Navy didn’t know RaineTech had withheld the best versions of its proprietary design for use in its own facility in the Bahamas, far beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean along the southern edge of the Bermuda Triangle.
Hell, Hansen thought, the Navy didn’t know about his Deepwater Research Facility either. What the Navy didn’t know could fill volumes, and he often thought that was the way they wanted it—plausible deniability across the board. All
his team had to do was deliver what the senior swabbies needed and they’d look the other way, or maybe they wouldn’t bother looking. He wasn’t sure and didn’t care. Everyone had an agenda and the Navy commanders were no different. Best of all, he could triple his normal profit margins and still come in as the lowest bidder on their contracts, thanks to his inside man in the Department of Defense.
Hansen stopped directly behind the technician and exhaled in frustration. He was tired of waiting.
“What’s the delay, O’Neill? Where’s my status report?”
Tim O’Neill’s face glowed blue as the raw data from the deployment system marched across the computer screen. “Just coming in now, Sir. Operation Trident proceeding on schedule,” the technician said. “You were correct, boss. Looks like everyone was glued to the broadcast from the NEC. Drones Alpha through Omega weren’t detected and I can confirm full dispersal over each of the designated targets.”
Hansen smiled in satisfaction. The drones had released fast-acting weather control nano-spores, code-named Trident, at key locations around the globe. The effect had been almost instantaneous, because RaineTech had prepared the atmosphere patiently over two decades, using a combination of military transports, private planes, and unmanned drones to spread its proprietary seed chemicals, which had since become part of the earth’s water cycle, in the air.
Most civilians thought the contrails in the sky were the random emissions of passenger airliners and military aircraft, not the work of his seed craft. The few conspiracy theorists who’d realized something was going on had it partially right: they claimed “Big Brother” was engineering the weather in order to cause worldwide drought, with the endgame of controlling the world’s population through regulation of food and water sources. RaineTech’s PR department had leaked that misinformation through backchannels over the years to bolster their theories, just to keep them busy and guessing. Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory—the underground media and the bloggers ate that shit up. His all time favorite was Alec Stone of Shadow Wars fame. One covert tip and his lies would spread like clockwork.
Fools.
“Where’s my video confirmation?” Hansen asked.
“Coming up on the big screen now,” the technician reported, tapping a pair of keys. The image came to life on the ten by twenty foot bank of screens above the control console.
Hansen watched the live camera feed from a drone circling at high altitude above the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It showed a massive red storm centered over Washington, DC and spreading like a replicating virus. The storm had already completely covered the capital city and was expanding quickly in all directions.
“Watch your flight path, son. The electromagnetic field powering the nano-storm will down our asset and I don’t think your paycheck will cover it.”
“Roger that,” the tech said, moving his hands and fingers quickly to change the drone’s course.
To the north, Baltimore was almost completely under the blood-red downpour, and to the south, its leading edge had reached the outskirts of Richmond. The storm would cover the entire East Coast of the United States in a few hours, and by the following morning it would reach inland as far as St. Louis and Chicago. By the time Trident was finished, North America would be smothered under a thick blanket of red, all of it engineered and controlled by RaineTech.
Hansen’s eyes lit up with dollar signs—his well-funded client and his Board of Directors would be pleased, adding another forty-one billion in profits to the coffers. His corporation’s single biggest contract to date.
“Switch to satellite. Give me wide angle view.”
“Yes, sir,” O’Neill replied. He typed a series of commands and the screen split into four images, each showing roughly one quarter of the globe. Hansen watched as red sections eased across the display, slinking along the edges of every continent on Earth.
The Red Rain had arrived.
“Good work, O’Neill,” Hansen said, taking a Ruger pistol from his waistband. He held it an inch from the back of the technician’s head and pulled the trigger.
O’Neill’s face exploded in a spray of blood and brain matter as he slumped forward onto the control console. Hansen pushed the body aside, then keyed in the self-destruct sequence for the detachable underwater control pod.
He hurried to the compression hatch, got into the waiting one-man submarine, and plotted a course for an island two nautical miles to the east. He navigated the sub over the Deepwater Testing Facility, a massive underwater complex which spread for hundreds of yards across the seafloor.
Large and small bio-domes were scattered like eggs in a chicken coop, connected by corridors resembling cables lying in the sand. The handful of observation domes were made of clear Plexiglas and well lit. Others were made of gray metal; thick, contoured and shielded to keep his highly classified work a secret from surface detection.
The research station was empty at the moment and it was no accident. He’d given his entire research team and support staff the week off, except for O’Neill, and done so in the form of a surprise getaway cruise. He’d told the group it was a well-earned bonus for their roles in generating record profits the previous fiscal year. Of course, his story was a ruse. He needed them out of the way for today’s classified deployment.
Hansen had burned through a pile of cash arranging the all-expenses-paid getaway for his team, but it was well worth it. His careful planning and execution would only cost him the expense of a cruise for forty-seven loyal employees, a detectable control pod, and of course the life of Tim O’Neill. Minimal loss for maximum profits—an excellent return on investment.
He kept a close eye on the sub’s rear-facing camera, and when the control pod exploded and then collapsed in on itself, he smiled.
Mission accomplished.
All that remained now was to collect his massive payday and disappear into the chaos that would soon sweep the planet.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Simon leaned against the back door of the van, panting heavily. His body ached all over; it had been years since he’d taken a beating, and he’d forgotten how much he disliked it. He was used to being on the winning side of physical altercations. Once his breathing calmed down, he noticed a soft thrumming on the roof, and remembered: the rain. Blood-red rain falling from blood-red thunderstorms.
What the hell was going on out there?
He brought his attention to the redheaded girl, then looked around at the rest of the vehicle’s cargo space. Forget what is going on outside, he thought. What the hell is going on in here? The walls of the van were lined with high tech instrument panels and sophisticated computer equipment. A monitor to his right displayed a familiar picture—a picture of him. One he hadn’t seen in years.
It was the photo his marketing manager had forced him to take and post on their corporate website—the website the same marketing manager had forced him to create and publish online for Ghost Works’ would-be investors. The picture made him uncomfortable and so did taking the company public at the time. He didn’t like losing control of anything and was much more at ease being the guy with one leg up on the competition and the intel in any given situation. And yet here he was, at a disadvantage to two kids who appeared out of nowhere and saved his hide.
“You okay, Simon?” Tally asked. She sat on a small stool bolted to the floor of the van in front of the screen displaying his picture.
“Yeah, I guess,” he replied, “I got some pretty bad bruises.” He examined his arms and pulled up his t-shirt to reveal several black and blue marks in the shape of boot treads. “But I don’t think anything is broken.”
“I was afraid we were too late. If it wasn’t for that rain, I think they might’ve beaten you to death. Who were they, anyway?”
Simon gave her a downtrodden look, wanting to get his point across. “Families of the victims. Mostly.”
The girl gave him a blank look.
“Tessa’s victims,” he said, not wanting to
go into more detail.
“Oh. Right,” she said, pausing for a moment. “Your wife. Sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“And the rest?”
“Drunks looking for an excuse to start some shit, I’m guessing. Not that it matters.”
“Executions will do that,” she said. “The producers of that show really know how to jack up the crowd. It’s a wonder more fights didn’t break out in the crowd.”
“Show?”
She shrugged.
Simon paused. “Listen. I appreciate the rescue, but I think we should cut to the chase. I guess I should thank you for saving me first, but what I really want to say is, who are you? What do you want with me?”
“Yes, you should thank me—I mean us—but you don’t have to, because I didn’t—we didn’t—” she gestured to the driver, “save you out of the goodness of our hearts.”
“I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
“I’m afraid you’re not going to like the sound of much of what I have to say.”
“The entire world is fucked,” the driver said over his shoulder. “And now it’s raining blood.”
“Sinister words coming from the mouths of babes,” Simon said, feeling the words drip from his lips like the blood dripping from the gash on his elbow. “What did you say your names were?”
“We didn’t,” the girl replied. “And we’re not children.”
“Really? Could have fooled me.”
“No. We’re not.”
“I’m seventeen,” the driver said.
Simon tried not to laugh. There was a long pause as he and the redhead stared at one another.
He broke the silence. “Okay then. If you’re not going to tell me who you are, then just pull over and let me out. You know who I am, but I don’t know who you are. That dynamic isn’t going to work for me. Not on any level. So driver,” Simon called to the front of the van, “thanks for the ride, buddy, but I need you to pull over. Anywhere will be fine.”
Redfall: Fight for Survival (American Prepper Series Book 1) Page 4
