Marco looked at Barrett, as a cop tried to move them down the street and off the avenue on to an already congested 8th Street. ‘Friend of yours?’
‘There were three of us,’ she said, realizing with a crushing certainty that no one was paying attention to what Carla was saying.
‘Wait a minute,’ Marco said. ‘You were one of the hostages. I saw your picture on TV … she was the other one. That red hair … she’s kind of hot, in a pushy, deranged sort of way … so are you.’
Barrett quickly weighed the options – run for it, or … Everything felt like a single roll of the dice. ‘How big are your balls?’ she asked.
‘Big,’ Marco said.
‘Big enough to plow through this mess?’
‘You got it.’ He turned the wheel hard to the right, surprising the hell out of the nearest cop who had to jump back to avoid getting hit. Marco’s body tensed as he focused on the dense circle of Guardsmen.
Barrett watched him as he laid on the horn and barreled toward the armed Guardsmen.
She rolled down her window and unlatched the door. She screamed out, ‘Carla!’ She turned to Marco. ‘If there’s a chance we can grab her let’s do it, but don’t stop.’
‘You want them to follow us,’ he stated.
‘Hell, yes.’
‘Delancey Street?’
‘Hell, yes.’
‘Hang on!’
Carla, seizing the moment, had slipped through the clumsily suited Guardsmen and now ran toward them.
Twenty feet away from her Marco shouted, ‘Hold on!’ He slammed his foot on the break. Loaves of bread shot forward from the back, as Barrett wedged her feet hard under the dash to keep from flying through the windshield. The she pushed her door open, as Carla dove head first across her lap.
Marco didn’t wait, and with Carla’s legs still hanging comically out of the door, he made a beeline past the Guardsmen down Fifth. Glancing in the rear-view, he commented, ‘It’s like the fucking Keystone Cops.’ He slowed down. ‘You want them to follow, right?’
‘Yes,’ Barrett said, as she helped Carla get off their laps. ‘You OK?’ she asked.
‘Yes … you?’
‘I think so.’
Carla looked in the side mirror. ‘Here they come.’
‘Yup,’ Marco said. ‘Oh, shit!’
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Barrett said, watching several patrol cards head north in their direction up Fifth Avenue.
‘Here we go!’ Marco said, jamming his foot on the gas. The truck shot forward and before the advancing patrol cars could effectively block off the avenue they barreled past.
‘Keep going,’ Barrett said, ‘they’re not going to lose us.’
‘You guys must be really important,’ Marco added, his hands tense on the wheel, as a helicopter roared overhead.
‘Do you think they got Ed?’ Carla asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Barrett said, her eyes fixed on the avenue as they flew downtown. ‘I think he tried to pull them off of us … at least they’re not firing.’
‘They’re not,’ Carla said. ‘I guess maybe someone wants to keep us alive. They know Glash isn’t dead,’ she added. ‘I just pray we get there in time.’
‘What if he’s not there?’ Barrett asked, giving voice to her fear.
‘Then we’re all fucked,’ Carla said, and then added, ‘And I’ll go down in history as the woman who let it happen.’
A squad car tried to edge them off the road. ‘Ladies,’ Marco said, ‘hang on!’ He shot ahead. In front of them the light turned red at the intersection with Houston Street. Cars zipped back and forth along the four-lane thoroughfare that separated the Village from SoHo.
‘You can’t stop,’ Barrett said, holding her breath and willing the light to change color.
A megaphone blasted from the closest patrol car. ‘Pull over. Pull over immediately. This is not a warning; pull your vehicle over immediately. You are aiding and abetting escaped felons. You are committing a felony. Pull over immediately.’
‘Here we go!’ Marco said, his eyes fixed on the rushing traffic. He hit the brakes hard and then accelerated, dodging through the two lanes of oncoming westbound. At the median, a taxicab nearly clipped the front of the truck. Horns blared. Two pedestrians trapped in the center of Houston looked on in horror as Marco barreled toward them. They dove out of the way as the truck bounced over the median and he floored the gas. ‘Good thing traffic is light,’ he quipped as a cabbie swore at them. ‘So how far down on Delancey?’ he asked.
She gave him the number.
‘My guess is it’s three blocks. If we get stopped,’ he said, ‘just run for it … but here’s a question,’ he said, hanging a right on to the one-way, single-lane Orchard. ‘What you plan to do if this guy is there? … Oh fuck, I’m heading the wrong way.’
Carla looked at Barrett as they stared down the street crammed with sidewalk stalls, but luckily no cars coming in the opposite direction. ‘There’s only one thing to do,’ she said dryly. ‘Richard Glash has to be stopped … at any cost.’
‘You’re not packing, are you?’ Marco asked, as they bounced down the narrow, pockmarked street, which even in the midst of the city’s crisis was thronged with shoppers. ‘In the glove compartment,’ he said.
Barrett clicked it open, and saw a handgun nestled under a stack of papers. She glanced in the rear-view and saw a row of police cars, lights and sirens following close.
‘Take it,’ he said, ‘it’s loaded. You know how to use one?’
‘Yes,’ Barrett said, hefting the small pistol, checking the safety and then securing it in the pocket of her stolen bomber jacket.
‘Barrett, look!’ Carla shouted and pointed at a tall man with an M16 strapped across his back running down the street less than half a block away. ‘It’s Hobbs.’
‘Stop the truck!’ Barrett said.
‘Boy, am I in trouble,’ Marco groaned as he pulled to a stop at the corner of Rivington.
‘No,’ Barrett shouted back as she jumped out, following Carla, ‘you’re a hero.’
Marco looked at the two women and then back at the long line of squad cars and paramilitary vehicles that had bottlenecked the street and the new ones now coming at him from the south. ‘Fucking A!’ And he jumped out and ran after Barrett and Carla.
‘Hobbs!’ Barrett shouted, as police, Guardsmen and the Homeland Security agents closed in on them.
Between the sirens and the megaphones demanding that they surrender, it was deafening. The din completely blocked the noise from Hobbs’s booted foot as he kicked at an alley gate padlocked from the other side.
‘Stand back,’ Barrett said, pulling out Marco’s gun.
‘Where the hell did you get—’
Before she could answer, Barrett squeezed off two shots. It did nothing.
Hobbs shouldered the M16, took aim and shredded the lock. He kicked the gate open.
He sprinted down the alley, took aim, and shot the lock off the door to Peter Glash’s apartment. ‘They’ve got to be here somewhere,’ he said. ‘Move fast, and Barrett … for God’s sake, be careful.’
‘You too,’ she said, looking around the apartment, finding everything about it horribly familiar. ‘He’s drawn all this,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Carla replied. ‘He’s been here before. Or maybe he remembered it from his childhood.’
The two women looked at each other as cops flooded into the room behind them. ‘The basement,’ they said in unison.
‘There were books of drawings,’ Barrett said, ‘in a basement, all of the ones where I was dying were in some kind of underground space … no windows. Hobbs, how do we get down to the basement?’
‘Come on,’ he said, as they ran through the living room and into the candy store. ‘Usually stairs are in the back,’ he said, as they heard law-enforcement officers pounding into the house behind them.
‘There!’ Carla shouted, finding a wooden door. She twisted the handle. Locked.
<
br /> ‘Hold on.’ Hobbs took aim and fired. The rifle clicked, he tried again. ‘Shit!’ He hurled himself at the door and as it flew in, he half tumbled down a flight of unlit wooden stairs. A cord overhead tickled his forehead, he pulled on it and a single bare bulb lit the narrow stairwell.
‘Don’t come down!’ a muffled voice shouted from below. ‘Stay back! Don’t come down!’
‘It’s George!’ Barrett cried, racing Hobbs down with Carla right behind.
‘Stay away!’ George shot back. ‘For God’s sake, Barrett, don’t come down here! Please!’
The three of them gasped at the fluorescent-lit scene. Cosway’s pustule-covered body was more gruesome than anything Hobbs had seen in all his years on Major Crime.
Booted footsteps came down fast and furious. A man in a hazmat shouted, ‘Everybody freeze!’
‘That’s it!’ Barrett turned around and faced the cops and agents flooding into the basement. ‘Just all of you shut up!’ she ordered. And without waiting for a response, asked Houssman, still masked and chained to a cot wearing his blue tarp, ‘Where’s Glash?’
‘They’re gone,’ he said. ‘He infected himself with plague; he’s very sick.’
‘How long ago?’ Hobbs asked.
‘They just left,’ Houssman said. ‘You were so close. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. Didn’t you see them? You must have passed them.’
‘No,’ Hobbs said. ‘The alley gate was locked … something’s not making sense …’
‘Where are they headed?’ Barrett asked.
George looked down at the floor by his cot. It was strewn with layers of Glash’s drawings. ‘There,’ he said.
Barrett’s heart sank as she saw the scenes of carnage and the façade of University Hospital.
‘Justine,’ she gasped.
‘He’s going back to the beginning,’ Houssman said. ‘That’s where it started. He’s starting an epidemic. To infect as many as possible.’
Barrett was frantic, picturing her sister, who’d just helped them escape. ‘We’ve got to go back. Oh my God!’ She looked around at the throng who were gawking at Cosway, their faces filled with fear and disgust. ‘Who’s in charge?’ she shouted.
Seconds ticked by, as personnel from the different agencies looked around, waiting for someone to take responsibility.
Hobbs spoke. ‘I’m Detective Second Grade Ed Hobbs with the NYPD. We need to clear this space. No one is to come near that body. Dr Houssman needs to be quarantined and we need to get our asses back to University Hospital, now.’ He looked at the first of the hazmat-suited Guardsmen. ‘You, what’s your name?’
‘Lieutenant Kane, sir.’
‘OK, Kane you handle the situation here. No one is to go near the body, understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘This entire building needs to be thoroughly searched. There’s a chance Glash is still here and is hiding. No one is to approach him. If he attempts to run, shoot to kill.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good, now we need to get Dr Conyors and Ms Phelps out of here as they’re the two who’ve had the most contact with Glash and have the best chance of identifying him.’ He looked up the still clogged stairwell, and barked, ‘Move! Now!’
To Barrett’s amazement, and to Hobbs’s as well, they did.
Overhead, a new sound rattled the building, the roar of a motorcycle.
‘No fucking way!’ Hobbs bolted up the stairs, back through the apartment and out the alley door. Barrett and Carla followed close behind and were just in time to get a glimpse of both the Glashes shooting out of the alley on a black-and-chrome motorcycle. Richard’s arms were wrapped tight around his father’s waist, clinging to him, his black hair matted to his scalp, his face pressed against his back. He was smiling, and his skin was red and covered with tight, fluid-filled pustules. The older man was wearing a face mask, his body hunched low on the bike as he shot out of the alley and then north, zigzagging at breakneck speed through the clogged street, twisting and dodging between the patrols cars and the merchant displays on the sidewalks.
Hobbs shouldered the M16, but realized he was out of bullets. ‘Shoot him!’ he shouted, ditching the rifle; he tore off after them.
Bullets whizzed erratically overhead. Hobbs sprinted to the corner of Orchard and Rivington with Barrett and Carla close behind. They saw the Glashes head west and then north on Bowery.
‘The truck,’ Barrett said, running past Hobbs, as she yanked opened the driver’s side door to Marco’s bread truck. He was nowhere in sight – probably picked up for aiding and abetting – but the keys were in the ignition.
The three piled in, and with Barrett at the wheel they took off down Rivington. At the Bowery she ran a red and nearly tipped the ungainly vehicle as she sped north.
‘I should have taken the wheel,’ Hobbs said, his gaze intent on the road ahead, looking for the motorcycle.
‘Shut up,’ Barrett said. ‘Just tell me the quickest way!’
‘Left on Houston,’ he shouted.
There was a cab tight on her left.
‘Just do it,’ Hobbs ordered.
She gunned the engine and edged out the cab, clipping its front fender as she ran another red and just missed getting side-swiped by a garbage truck as she roared west on Houston.
‘There they are!’ Carla shouted, pointing at the barely visible motorcycle that was weaving through traffic two blocks ahead.
‘Floor it,’ Hobbs said, glad for the sirens behind them; they at least might help clear the traffic.
Barrett focused hard on the road and the three lanes of west-bound traffic. ‘Which way is he going to go?’
But before Hobbs could respond, they saw Richard Glash glance back. He said something to his father and the motorcycle bobbed to the right and then disappeared north up Lafayette.
‘Go!’ Carla shouted.
Barrett was trying to out-distance a black Town Car limousine on her right that didn’t want to let her pass.
‘Lay on the horn and don’t stop,’ Hobbs said, as he reached over Carla and banged on the passenger-side window and pressed his detective’s shield to the glass. The limo driver got the message and just as they hit the intersection with Lafayette he slammed on his brakes, allowing Barrett to hook right.
As they drove, Barrett longed to close her eyes and block out all the pedestrians they were passing; all people that Glash might soon be infecting. Then, suddenly, she caught sight of him. He was coughing and struggling to hang on to his father. But then the motorcycle took a left into the maze of small Greenwich Village streets.
‘Keep on him,’ Hobbs shouted.
‘I can’t stand it,’ Barrett muttered, her eyes glued to the road. ‘We’re always one step behind … Damn!’ The Glashes were zipping in the wrong direction down 8th Street.
‘Take Ninth,’ Hobbs cried, ‘see if we can head them off at Sixth Avenue.’
Barrett floored the gas and sped down the beautiful townhouse-lined street. At the intersection, the light was turning yellow.
‘Just go!’ Carla shouted. ‘Don’t stop!’
As they shot into the avenue a wall of oncoming traffic screeched and skidded. Horns blared as Hobbs spotted the motorcycle disappearing up Greenwich.
‘Damnit!’
Barrett, biting her lower lip, tried to steady the vehicle as she took a sharp left on to Sixth and then spun hard to the right in the direction of Greenwich. The two left tires lifted off the ground, the right wheels scraped against the sidewalk. ‘Shit!’ She wondered if they were going to tip. She held her breath and kept her foot on the gas as the truck righted itself with all four tires on the road.
‘Woman driver,’ Hobbs muttered. ‘There they are!’
Clumsy as her maneuver had been, they were now less than a block behind. Ahead, the light on Seventh had just turned.
‘They’re not going to stop,’ Barrett said, as she gunned the engine.
Peter Glash glanced back and th
en shot blindly into the intersection. As he did, the cars racing south screeched; one cab was too late and to avoid hitting the motorcycle smashed into a steel parking meter. An older minivan with spray-painted slogans about the end of the earth was violently rear-ended by an SUV. It fishtailed into the middle of the avenue, its front abruptly facing north and its smashed rear blocking one of the southbound lanes.
Barrett laid on the horn, praying that the stalled traffic would stay that way, and flew into the intersection. She could see the stunned expressions on the faces of the zealots in the crashed minivan, then heard the ripping of steel as the bread truck grazed the front of their vehicle.
‘Jesus!’ Hobbs said, as they sailed past, now not a hundred feet behind Richard and Peter. ‘Where in hell did you learn how to do that?’
Through gritted teeth Barrett replied, ‘I’ve been driving in New York since I was sixteen. No guts, no glory. What’s the plan? We’re less than a block from the hospital. He’s dripping with plague. You’ve got no bullets. What are we supposed to do?’
Peter Glash again glanced back, as the massive white façade of University Hospital came into view. The bike revved and accelerated, heading straight for the broad marble steps.
Richard Glash feels the breath coming hot out of his mouth. He clutches his father’s back, realizing that this is the closest he’s ever come to hugging another human being as an adult. Perhaps his mother held him when he was young, but that he can’t remember. And what he recalls of George and Delia Houssman’s affection turned out to all be lies.
‘Just hang on,’ his father shouts back as he makes the perilous run through six lanes of oncoming traffic on Sixth.
Richard’s head feels light, and all over his body sticky fluid leaks through his clothes. The back of his father’s leather jacket is covered with a film of the serum that oozes from the cracking pustules.
Ashes, Ashes Page 23
