by Ron Savage
Simon was thinking he might have a plan himself. “Mind if I borrow this for a few minutes?”
“Keep the thing.”
“Where’s your restroom?”
“Gonna wipe your ass with it?”
“Just directions, Morris.”
The old man nodded toward an open set of double doors. As Simon made his way down the dark he moved his fingertips over the folded beige stationary.
Okay, Benjamin, I need you now. I finally need your annoying gifts.
He shut the bathroom door, not bothering with the light, and sat atop the toilet seat lid. Unfolding the letter across his knees, he placed a flat hand on the paper.
C’mon. Show me.
II
Phoebe’s face in a sliver frame, there on the desk, and sunlight reflected off the glass. Simon stared down at pair of hands, the nails manicured and glossy. A man’s hands, but who? Must be Jonathan. A thin gold ballpoint pen was clasped between his fingers and poised over a blank sheet of beige stationary.
Dear Mr. Hodge:
I want to personally thank you for your…
The pen hovered above the paper, waiting for a word. Looking through Jonathan’s eyes, Simon watched and felt the mild quiver of the senator’s hand.
…hard work and creativity…
He sensed Clayman’s concentration turning from itself, the creeping spread of exhilaration bringing images, faint at first, translucent and vague, then the images gained depth, the colors fleshing out, the excitement becoming pronounced.
Pictures.
Lots of them.
No, more like clips of juiced up film.
A darkness is racing across the ocean, a swarming darkness. The water: first choppy and glittering, suddenly turning dull beneath that monstrous cloud. Noise is within the darkness, a humming sound—soft, remote, but growing louder—and not one sound but many, all vibrating at the same frequency, the same electronic drone. As the cloud sweeps closer to the water, the hum becomes deafening, a rapid clicking of metal on metal…
…know that these efforts will have a major impact…
Other images appeared; Simon, observing from behind Jonathan’s eyes.
The cloud…
…shifting…
…to wispy trails of shiny black smoke…
…an illusion created by distance now; the random formation of the locusts heading toward the shoreline. And when the cloud crosses the Euphrates, it divides into three, veering off to Samarra, to Ba’qubah, to Baghdad, mirroring the sunlight with a thousand small metal wings, their bright path reflecting on the desert floor.
…on securing the future of your country.
From the deck of an aircraft carrier, two senior officers and Jonathan observe the cloud separating into three swarms from high powered cameras mounted on helicopters miles from the shoreline.
“Right on target,” says one officer.
“Well done, Mr. President,” says the other.
Simon feeling Clayman’s adrenal rush: the senator’s skin flushed and warm, his heart in overdrive, the officers’ praises barely heard above the jolting pulse in his ears.
…Sincerely,
Senator Jonathan Clayman
The images turn dark, the heart slowing its pace, weighted by new visions. There’s no traffic in the cities. Cars, bicycles, small buses and trucks, many are parked curbside; some have been abandoned on the roads. A mid-afternoon sun cuts the streets in light and shadow. It’s the seventh day after the invasion. The cities seem empty of people, except for a few bodies, a man drapes the steering wheel of his car, two girls are sprawled on the sidewalk, each clasping the other’s hand, blood draining from the mouth of one and pooling by her face. More bodies are on the streets, but most have gone home or to crowded hospitals.
Simon heard the sound of flies…
…and a voice.
Behind the two girls is a small appliance repair shop. A TV has been left on—the program taped, certainly—a gray haired man is talking to an interviewer.
“…spores should enter the lungs,” he’s saying, his voice clinical and detached, “…they migrate to the lymph nodes, you see, then change to the bacterial form and multiply, producing toxins that will cause tissue destruction and bleeding. Right here,” he says, tapping the middle of his chest. “‘Hemorrhagic necrotizing mediastinitis’, we call it.”
“…How soon?”
“After the initial symptoms, twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”
There’s a black metallic beetle-like thing near the two dead girls. Its wings flutter and buzz. Stops. Buzzes again. Then a curl of dark smoke rises from the insect, and it begins to dissolve.
Through Jonathan’s fantasy, Simon watches the face of Phoebe Clayman appear, eyes wide with panic, lips parted. She can’t find a breath. Fingers touch her throat. Blood pours from her mouth.
III
Hodge slid a thin silver card through the activation slot. A recorded female voice murmured, “Please place your left hand on the recognition outline.” Simon saw a frosted green light scan the length of Morris Hodge’s hand. The voice said, “Good morning, Mr. Hodge.”
The thick Plexiglas door opened silently, disappearing within the wall, closing after them.
Simon noticed two surveillance cameras attached to the lobby’s high ceiling. The cameras were positioned diagonally from one another, and their thin red beams swept across the black and white marble floor. Hodge put a finger to his lips, pantomiming for Simon to remove his shoes.
It took them a half-hour to arrive at a steel door on the opposite side of the lobby, stopping every twenty seconds as the red lights arced passed, inches from their feet. Two more doors followed, Morris using the silver card but no hand recognition. And, thank God, no monitoring either visually or auditorily. “…bizarre,” Hodge muttered, as they hiked down a long corridor of polished steel walls and fluorescent lights. “BioChem doesn’t even allow its own security in the R&D area. They don’t trust anybody.”
“Suppose someone tried to sneak in the back way?”
“There is no back way. No windows, either. You go through the lobby or you don’t get in. And to open the door to the lobby you got to have this.” He wagged the silver card with a thumb and middle finger. “For the sake of argument, let’s say someone did waltz into the lobby. If the cameras don’t spot him—or her—the audio sensors can detect the squeak of a shoe; hell, audio knows when you have a goddamn cold. And automatically—within two to four seconds—a chemical called Mytril is released by pressure jets along the floorboards and the ceiling. It’s a sedative, very potent. Odorless. Colorless. The shit will knock you on your ass for twenty-four hours.”
“What exactly does the security staff do?”
“They call us.”
The last door opened, going flush into the wall. They walked through the archway, and Simon heard a faint whoosh as it closed behind them.
R&D looked like a warehouse, high ceilings with exposed metal beams, cinder block painted forest green; and along the right side, a row of twenty to twenty-five large, beige-colored oil drums, a glowing red and green panel atop each one—temperature control for the spores, Simon figured—and wooden boxes lined the entire left wall, two crates high.
Hodge had gone to the center of the room, a vividly lighted work area defined by four large white tables. Each had its own computer, several adjustable magnifying lamps, oscillators of varying sizes, and something Simon thought might be an electronic microscope. Other instruments cluttered the tables, none of which were familiar to him.
“What’s the time?” The old man asked.
“3:46.”
“We’ve got ninety minutes.” Morris seemed anxious; completely sober, too. “Staff will start arriving around five.”
“Jesus, it took us a half-hour to get here.”
Hodge made his way to the first vat. “You’ll have to alter the temperatures, while I work on the sensors.”
“Show me.” Simon was feelin
g his own anxiety. His stomach and the back of his throat started to burn, and the pain in his right leg had spread from hip to toe. “Listen, Morris, this stuff isn’t going to explode, right?”
The old man grinned; patted Simon’s arm. “Relax. Remember, we’re saving the world, my friend.”
“Let’s just live to enjoy it.”
He watched Hodge work the panel. A small rectangular window positioned above two rows of bright red and green buttons read 76.2 in digital numbers. “You’ll increase the vats to 103.2 Fahrenheit, like so.” The old man pressed the top red button on the left, then clicked the middle green one, the temperature on the digital read-out rising with each click. “There. You think you can do that?”
Simon nodded and began the task, moving down the row of beige-colored vats, clicking the appropriate buttons; waiting for what seemed like forever as the numbers slowly changed to 103.2. Christ, I’m a criminal, he thought, and imagined a SWAT team bursting through the steel door, black helmets hiding their faces, high-tech rifles aiming laser beams at his chest; the men yelling, “On the floor! On the floor!”
Relax. Remember, we’re saving the world, my friend.
Uh-huh. Tell that to the SWAT guys.
Simon heard a buzzing sound. He glanced across the room at Morris, the man tapping codes into his hand-held transmitter. Going from crate to crate brought on the effect of a humming madrigal whose words had been forgotten.
4:10…
“What now, Morris?” Simon had to shout over the noise.
“Now we wait five minutes.”
“And leave, right?”
“No. We put everything back to square one. Five minutes ought to kill the bacillus and burn the sensors just enough to make them inaccurate.”
Simon tried to add up the time: a five minute wait, an extra ten to reset the temperatures and shut down the sensors, and a half-hour to exit the building. He felt his legs go weak; leaned against one of the metal vats for balance.
Too close…
…we’ll never make—”
Then he smiled, feeling his body lose tension. “Morris, it’s Saturday morning, for God’s sake. We forgot. Who works on Saturday?”
“We do.”
“Shit.”
“Easy, my friend.” Hodge gave his shoulder an encouraging squeeze. Then he handed Simon a small rubbery device that appeared to be nose plugs—a narrow blue canister attached to them—but the plugs were broad, as if designed to fit snugly over the nose instead of in the nostrils. “Put this in your pocket.”
“What is it?”
“A gas mask. The little rubber cups cover your nose; breathing activates the canister. Invented it myself.”
“Why…why would we need—”
“Just in case.”
IV
4:32…
The door to the lab closed, a muted thump.
Hodge looked exhausted. The long night, his drinking and age, all of it was playing catch-up. Simon wanted the man to move faster—a lot faster—he’d even thought of carrying him, but the pain hadn’t quit in his right hip and he wasn’t exactly the swiftest guy on two legs, either. No way we’ll be out of here by five. Well be lucky to get to the end of this goddamn hall.
“So how does it feel to have saved the world?” Morris sounded weak; he managed a smile. “…for awhile, anyhow.”
“Ask me again when we hit the parking lot.
“…couldn’t have done it alone, you know.”
“I enjoyed the company, Mr. Hodge.”
“No matter what happens, you and I, we’ve done a good thing here.”
“I believe that.”
Simon thought Jonathan might agree, too. But he’d also acquired a truth over the years: what people imagined and what they did were two separate roads. These roads merged on occasion, fantasy becoming an act; yet more often than not, such boundaries remained steady. Though Jonathan could envision the devastation, the two girls lying in their own blood, even see his daughter as a potential victim, could he resist? That’s the question, isn’t it? If you were president, Senator Clayman, could you give an order to kill men, women and children indiscriminately? Why don’t they ask that question in TV debates? The beauty of biological warfare, right? Murder: which ever way the wind blows. I bet Eddy thinks you’ll do it. Why else would you be his boy?
They reached the first of the two doors before the lobby. Morris swiped the silver card through the slot, and Simon checked the time.
4:43…
“Stop looking at your watch,” Hodge muttered. “I can’t go any quicker; and from the looks of that limp, you can’t do much better.”
Simon wondered if Benjamin would consider jail enough of a sacrifice. Probably not. No, Benjamin probably wanted blood and guts, limbs lost, blindness, death: something with a little oomph to it. But he hadn’t done this for Benjamin; had given him only a brief thought. The choice made sense; and if the consequences were less than palatable, jail seemed a fair price to keep a life from harm.
…for you, too, Virgil…
…for the time I hesitated…
…and lost you.
Life ends so easily.
He could’ve refused to let Virgil leave the car, that old boat of a Buick; could’ve gone with him and not waited, or maybe just knocked his fat ass out. Scenarios were invented by the day, by the week, the years. Simon once confided the wish to alter the past to his father. Max had run the Kennedy tape for him, the motorcade driving down the sunlit Dallas street—that trip two years before Simon’s birth—the shot fired, the president leaning forward in a spray of blood; then backward, clutching his throat. “You always hope for a different ending,” his father said, looking at the TV. “Perhaps the shot misses…or perhaps no shot at all. Just another beautiful day, another beautiful ride, and Jackie with no blood on her pink dress.” Max clicked the remote control, the picture turning to white fuzz. “…But it can’t be done, not for him and not for Virgil.” That was bullshit, of course. He’d simply been too young to have faith in his gifts.
Now fluorescent lights glinted off the final steel door as it glided into the wall. Simon looked up at the cameras, the thin red beams scanning rhythmically over the marble floor of the lobby. Morris had already removed his shoes; Simon did the same, glancing at his watch.
4:56…
…Christ.
Hodge frowned, scolding him with the wag of a finger.
They entered the large room, backs against the wall—away from the cameras—and inched toward the lobby door sideways, pausing when the beams passed, no more than five or six footsteps at a time. Simon felt sweat beading on his face.
No way we’re getting out…
…no goddamn way.
Then he saw two men, maybe thirty feet from the front door, their shapes distorted faintly by the thick Plexiglas, and he signaled to Hodge. The old man nodded, holding up the small blue canister. Simon tucked the loafers under his arm, following Morris’ lead, adjusting the mask over his nostrils, taking a deep inhale to activate the oxygen. He was about to tap index finger to thumb, the “okay” sign, when Hodge tossed a penny toward the center of the room. The coin bounced twice, spinning in place before it rested on the marble floor.
Immediately, Simon heard a sssssssss rising from the baseboards. Hodge took his arm and leaned in, whispering: “Don’t breathe through your mouth.”
The cameras continued to rotate their red beams, but faster now, as if searching for the intruder.
Twenty or so seconds later the two men entered the lobby. One sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup, the other busy with a doughnut partially wrapped in a napkin.
The coffee guy said, “Hey, Morris, what’s goin—” and fell to the floor.
The other man stared down at him, looked up at Morris, then dropped the doughnut as his legs seemed to liquefy, hitting the marble knees first and collapsing alongside his buddy.
“Better living through chemistry,” Hodge mumbled, and they headed for the parking
lot.
SIXTEEN
I
Dora called 911 a little after two on Saturday morning; told the operator that she’d been scraping her uterus with a knitting needle and blood was everywhere and could somebody please, please get her to a hospital before she died.
Dr. Tim—“Hi, just call me Dr. Tim”—tried to question Dora; this, maybe three hours after the orderly had rolled her from Emergency to Albert Einstein’s ICU. Dr. Tim appeared way too young to practice anything: blond, straight hair, surfer hair, and a cute face he probably shaved once a week, whether required or not. And what exactly could she confide?
Well, Dr. Tim, I woke up and found a penis in me. This wasn’t a human penis, though the asshole on top of me looked pretty human. And, yes, he’s done it several times—always when I’m sleeping. Except…well…except once he pulled me into a painting and took me to Hell for four years. Or perhaps New York. I’m not sure.
How am I doin’ so far?
Instead, Dora waved Dr. Tim off with a limp hand, shutting her eyes and faking sleep. The pretense turned real soon enough. She didn’t wake until a nurse knocked on the door. “Your husband’s here, Mrs. Aaron. I’ll give you a minute or two, but you really do need rest.”
Simon…
…poor Simon.
Dora’s first thought was to hide. The shame she felt overwhelmed her, the anger and revulsion with Eddy, what she had done to herself—maybe never able to have another child—but in all of that, all that awful shit, she’d forgotten Simon entirely, the meeting between him and Hodge; and more…
…more…
…did he still want to be married to—
A warm hand touched her shoulder.
She turned, cheek on pillow, facing him.
“You okay?” He brushed the hair from her forehead.
Dora put a finger to his lips. “Tell me. Your meeting, how did—”
“Not now.”
“Yes, now.”
