Repulsed, Tony concealed the human detritus by rolling it up inside the hat, an action that earned him a funny look from Charlotte and brought back the mental image of Victoria’s broken and bent body he feared was indelibly burned into his memory. As a result of the instant recall, he caught a whiff of the coppery smell of her spilled blood. Then he was hearing again the murmurs and the sound of someone retching that filtered from the crowd as he took that knee near the body.
Tony was mentally back in the train car less than a second after experiencing the gut-wrenching flash of total recall. Hat still in hand, he stood on shaky legs and made his way to an empty bench near the side door. He sat down hard and leaned his upper body against the grimy beige wall. Feeling deep in his bones the subtle vibrations of the wheels passing over seams in the track, he tucked the balled-up hat in the gap between the wall and seat in front of him.
While Tony’s aim with the sneaky move had been to get the hat and its cargo out of sight and out of mind—he had to settle for just one out of the two. For try as he might, he couldn’t let go of poor Victoria.
So young and vibrant.
And now gone forever.
Tony was mostly alone during the second half of his trip. Tourists and locals came and went in Brooklyn and Queens. One rider, who’d been a constant fixture on the car since the Canal Street stop when Tony had switched seats, had had her face buried in her smartphone the entire ride.
Twenty minutes after leaving the Broad Street Station, the J Line rolled to a smooth stop at the Crescent Street platform, the doors slid open. and the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of a city just building a head of steam on an unseasonably warm and cloudless Sunday flooded inside the car.
As a smattering of riders collected belongings and moms drew their kids near to them, the twenty-something with the smartphone blurted an expletive and threw her head back. Thrusting an extended middle finger at the glossy screen she’d been fixated on for the duration of the ride, she opened the shoulder bag draped across her thighs and rather unceremoniously chucked the device inside.
Seeing this, Tony checked his phone and saw NO SERVICE displayed prominently across the top of the LCD screen. Remembering the first responders he’d called to 4WTC immediately after discovering Victoria, he shifted in his seat and looked toward Manhattan. In between the buildings flitting by he saw snippets of blue. Lifting his gaze by a degree revealed a sky marred by a drifting black smudge.
James Merkur drained his fourth tumbler of Johnny Walker Blue and went to pour himself another.
Voice filtering through the speakers, the pilot said, “Twenty minutes to Logan. It may take a couple of minutes to be cleared for landing.”
“We pay a lot of money to keep the backup jet there,” bellowed Underhill. Voice softening, he added, “We should have priority. Work on the controllers. Do what you can.”
Cheeks flushed red and slurring a little, Merkur said, “I want that G6 spooling up and ready to receive us as soon as we land.”
Underhill took his eyes off the countryside scrolling by and regarded Merkur. He’d found the colors of fall calming considering the circumstances. When he saw his boss’s flushed face and hunched shoulders, the severity of what they were all caught up in came flooding back.
“Flight plan is set,” said Underhill. “The crew and plane will be ready.”
As Merkur slumped back in the plush leather seat, the Bell 429 made a slight course correction that presented a fine view of the Atlantic out the starboard-side windows.
Having taken in the conversation without comment, Carson shifted in his seat and locked eyes with Merkur, who seemed to be melting into the seat next to him.
Carson said, “We’re all in the shit up to our eyeballs now. That’s why I respectfully ask that you come clean with me, sir.”
“What is it,” grumbled Merkur.
In the aft-facing seat opposite Merkur, Underhill’s head began to swing slowly side to side.
Ignoring this, Carson tapped the aluminum boxes at his feet and asked about the Bravo iteration of Romero.
“Don’t,” said Underhill.
Merkur raised a hand.
Underhill sat back and looked out his window.
“What is Romero B and why not just let the fire eat it all up? Then we’d have plausible deniability.”
“Bravo is the failed Alpha strain weaponized.” He went on to detail Operation Peasant Overlord. Finished, he tilted his head back and downed three fingers of Scotch in one gulp.
In the aft-facing seat opposite Carson, his right-hand man, Frederick Pavel, ran a gloved hand through his graying goatee and cast a thoughtful gaze toward Carson.
“Why infect North Korea?” asked Carson.
Underhill was squirming in his seat.
Bending forward, Merkur snatched up the box labeled Romero B and threw the latches. He opened the lid and spun the box to face Carson. “The contents of just one of those dispersed over their nuclear production facility will start a chain reaction of mayhem that the Hermit Nation will attribute to an attempted coup. The dispersal of Bravo over a select number of their bases will further add to the illusion and point the finger of guilt back a government known for dabbling in bio weapons. Hell, their leader lets them starve by the millions while he diverts money to the nuke and ICBM program. Ultimately China will come to this conclusion and seal their borders.”
Carson looked to his man then back to Merkur. “What happens to Bravo, then. Will it burn out quickly?”
“It’ll be contained in their bases. Eventually the North Korean people will have their country back.”
“That’ll denuclearize them for sure,” quipped Carson. Tone in his voice taking a sharp edge, he went on, “You can’t sell this as an altruistic venture. I don’t believe it for one second. Neither will the judge before he sends us all to prison for life.”
Merkur gripped the armrests and sat up straight in his seat. “You’re not seeing the big picture, Mr. Peet. Who do you think they’ll call on to provide the cure? Zen Pharma, that’s who they’ll call.” A sloppy half-smile ghosted across his face.
“One problem,” said Carson as he spun the box so the interior faced Merkur. “A canister is missing.”
Chapter 38
Unable to do anything to change the outcome, Riker had taken one last long look at the Bolt ripping flesh and entrails from the splayed-out old man, then sped off to where the Suburban was now parked on the overpass bookended by motels and facing the Pizza Hut and strip mall. In the minutes since they’d last set eyes on the interstate, nothing had changed. Just the same ghostly silent stretch of blacktop spooling out north and south.
The furniture store across the parking lot from the Pizza Hut, however, was a different story. A panel van was now backed up to the glass front doors. The massive plate window left of the doors had been reduced to pebbled glass on the ground. Three younger-looking men were carting smaller pieces of furniture from the store to the van.
Ignoring the looting taking place what amounted to a couple of blocks away and in broad daylight, Tara regarded Riker. “That was effin murder back there.” Body shaking subtly, she leaned forward against her shoulder belt and buried her face in her hands. “The way he moved was nothing like the others.”
“You’re wrong about that, Sis. That was exactly how the one inside the tunnel was moving. You were behind me and hugging the door by the time he saw us and hit that second gear. He, it, Bolt … whatever you want to call the bastard, rushed me the same way the one rushed that elderly lady.”
“Not that fast, though,” said Tara. She was biting her lip when she took her hands away from her face. She directed her gaze to the side mirror and watched the plume of smoke roiling up from the distant house.
Looking to Tara, Riker said, “Cute nicknames for whatever that man had become aside, what we just witnessed back there was Ma Nature at work. Call it natural selection. Call it whatever you want. Simple fact of the matter is that we are no long
er the only ones atop the food chain.”
Steve-O reappeared in the empty space between the front seat headrests. Looking to Riker, he said with a put-on Native American baritone, “Who is ‘we,’ paleface?” He chuckled and glanced at Tara, who appeared unamused.
“Better be careful with that kind of talk around my sister, Steve-O. She can’t take a joke.”
Tara shot a frosty glare Riker’s way. “We stole their land,” she said. “Gave them blankets laced with smallpox. Shall I go on?”
Clearly expecting a different reaction than the one playing out before him, Steve-O said, “Who is ‘we’? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?”
Riker looked away from the looting taking place and flicked his eyes to the rearview. Still no flashing blue and reds of a police cruiser, or red and yellows of emergency fire and medical.
Nothing.
Riker began to believe they were truly alone within Middletown’s city limits. Tearing his eyes from the smoke marring the sky above the fully involved structure fire, he turned and met Steve-O’s gaze.
“That’s more like it, Steve-O,” said Riker casually. “Tara … she prefers jokes of the banal variety. Sanitized. Stripped of anything pointing to ethnicity, religious bent, or sexual orientation.”
“Sex,” said Steve-O as a smile creased his face. Drawing in a sharp breath, he melted back into the Suburban’s cavernous interior.
Tara stared daggers at Riker. Whispering, she said, “I’m pretty sure people with Steve-O’s condition don’t understand nuance like we do. I bet he’s just repeating something he heard someone else say.”
Craning to see over his shoulder, Riker said, “The mouse in the pocket crack was real good, Steve-O. I’m stealing that one.” Off his right shoulder he felt the heavy bass kick of rap music but couldn’t see the source. Simultaneously, he heard the distinct metronomic thwop of rotor blades beating the air. Looking over the hood, he spotted far off in the distance a pair of dual rotor helicopters. The way they were moving, slow and low to the ground on a diagonal taking them away from the overpass, conveyed no sense of urgency. It struck Riker that this was all some kind of drill to them.
The reality of the situation was people had been lured into several makeshift evacuation sites scattered about the small city the night before. And even worse: Just blocks away, an elderly couple had been taken down, killed in the worst manner, their flesh consumed by a madman Riker had no clear explanation for.
“Stealing is bad,” said Steve-O. “Did you steal this truck?”
Before Riker could answer, Steve-O was singing the lyrics to yet another Cash song in which an autoworker smuggled car parts home from an assembly line in a lunchbox. Halfway through the first chorus, Riker interrupted, saying, “I borrowed it, Steve-O. There’s a big difference.”
As the noise from the helicopters dissipated and they became specks merging with the ground clutter far off on the horizon, the thumping of music emanating from a high-powered stereo was becoming more pronounced.
There was a whirring noise and the window behind Tara began to open.
“Be alert with that window down,” said Riker. “No telling when a Bolt might appear.”
“Don’t see a Bolt. But there’s a car coming. A red one. Real fast from over there,” said Steve-O. He had taken his hat off and was pointing south down I-69 with his head and upper body hanging outside the SUV.
With the bass heavy song infiltrating the Suburban’s interior, Riker found the master switch to Steve-O’s window by feel. “Watch yourself, Steve-O.”
Seeing Steve-O pull his head and arm inside, Riker pulsed the window up.
Tara turned in her seat and picked up the red car tearing their way on the freeway below. She’d recently seen one like it peel out and leave rubber on the street in front of the MU biology building. Only this car was lipstick red and sporting dual black stripes that ran from hood to trunk.
But a red blur as it disappeared from view beyond the far overpass rail, the car emerged a split second later on Riker’s side.
Even inside the Suburban with the windows closed, the engine roar echoing and rising from below easily overpowered the music that had preceded it.
Steve-O launched back into the Cash tune and soon was rattling off the makes and models of cars likely found only tucked away safely in a collector’s garage or rotting away in a rural field or some farmer’s barn.
Riker squinted and watched the car emerge from the shadows and seem to pick up speed—if that was at all possible considering its jet-plane-like rate of approach. Though he considered himself far from expert at calculating the speed of an object in motion, to him, it looked as if the muscle car was doubling the posted speed limit. Damn, he thought. Pushing one-thirty, throttle wide open, and no policia in sight. What I wouldn’t give to do that one day.
The Dodge Challenger raced off north, shrinking to Hot-Wheels-scale before his eyes. In the couple of seconds he had eyes on the retreating vehicle, he noted the horizontal taillight cluster parked below an abbreviated trunk-mounted wing. As the car’s big throaty V8 gulped air and the revs screamed up the power band, the glint of sun off the softball-sized chrome fuel cap caught his eye and confirmed his suspicion.
“That was a Hellcat,” he said to nobody in particular. “One day …” The last part was uttered in a voice low and betraying a touch of longing.
“So let’s see where she’s going,” chided Tara.
Riker slipped the Chevy into drive and cast a sidelong glance at her. “Who taught you it’s proper to refer to a car with a female pronoun?”
“I was talking about the driver,” shot Tara. “Had to be a woman. The color of the car is a dead giveaway.”
Riker pulled away from the guardrail and drove down the center of the overpass as if he owned the road. Steve-O was still riffing about his Frankenstein automobile when Riker hooked a left and they entered the deserted freeway at a fraction of the speed of the car that had just blazed by. A car that, strangely, he had a burning desire to see up close.
Chapter 39
Near Logan International Airport - Boston, Massachusetts
“That fucking bitch,” said Merkur, veins on his neck bulging. The box labeled Romero A was open on the cabin floor. “She stole one of each.”
Having already spoken of what happened to the vial of Romero A, Carson asked Underhill what he thought about the missing canister.
“I think she put it in her bag,” he answered. “She was acting strange. Wanting to go home. She asked me if she could leave on a couple of separate occasions.”
“What are the ramifications if it was in her bag?”
Underhill looked to Merkur. The Zen CEO was slumped in his seat and snoring.
“If the canister was breached, anyone present is infected. All first responders are infected.”
“A good deal of them will be dead or dying by now.”
Underhill nodded. “In ten to twelve hours the first wave will have all turned.” He swallowed hard. “If it was breached, all of Manhattan will be a no go zone by end of day tomorrow.”
“It’s an island,” said Carson. “It’ll be contained. Won’t it?”
Pavel said, “Too many tunnels and bridges.”
“Considering Alpha was released in Indiana this morning, at the first sign of infection the city will go on lockdown. You can bet they’ll attribute it to a dirty bomb. Who they attribute it to is anyone’s guess.”
Carson looked at Pavel. “We’re coming with you, Underhill. I don’t think Merkur is in any shape to veto the motion.”
“You’re needed in New York. There’s still ZP employees unaccounted for.”
Carson merely smiled and shook his head.
“Stay onboard and get back to New York. We’ll call with instructions.”
Hand resting on the pistol on his hip, Carson said, “That’s not how it’s going to go down.”
Without warning the helicopter shuddered and leaned hard left, obviously taking some kind
of evasive maneuver.
Merkur jerked awake and demanded to know what was happening.
Already focused on something outside the starboard window, Underhill said, “We’re being shadowed by a pair of black helicopters. No markings.”
Looking out the port-side window, Pavel said, “There’s another one about seven o’ clock to us. She’s hanging way back.” One gloved hand went to his sidearm. With the other he cinched his lap belt tighter.
“Our clearance to land at general aviation has been rescinded,” said the pilot over the shipboard comms. “We’re being ordered to divert to Beverly Regional. It’s a two-strip designated as a reliever. It’s about five miles northeast of Logan.”
“Ignore them,” barked Merkur. “Going there with these helicopters dogging us would be akin to walking into a dark alley with muggers on your tail. I’m not a stupid man. Put us down as close to the Gulfstream as you can.”
The pilot balked at first. Carson shoving a Sig Sauer semi-auto pistol in his face changed everything.
As the Bell banked to port and started to descend, the pair of helicopters closed in fast, taking station off the starboard side.
Gesturing out the window at the G6, Merkur said, “Right there by the fuel truck.”
Still under duress of the lethal lead variety, the pilot nosed the Bell toward the open patch of tarmac.
All around the general aviation facility, ground support vehicles zipped back and forth. Close by, a trio of jumbo jets were lined up nose to tail with maybe a hundred feet separating them. The shades were up and there was movement behind the windows of all three. Judging by the colorful flash on their massive tails, they were all bound for international destinations.
Holding up the procession and turned with its nose aimed at the runway entrance was a stark white jumbo jet. Emblazoned on the tail in a deep red and floating above the letters JAL was a stylized crane. Painted above the row of windows in bold black lettering, the words Japan Airlines ran from the cockpit to the front edge of the wings—nearly two-thirds the length of the bird.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise Page 19
