"Confirmed, Ed. They say they'll hold their fire."
"Good. Wunnerful. Except maybe for that one cop who didn't get the word. I think I'll get done and get the hell out of here, anyway, ma'am."
"That's probably for the best, Dragonfly. Wallace is reminding them again."
"Tell him that covers the beer today, and thanks."
"I heard that," said Wallace. "No deal. Saving your ass is worth a six-pack, at least. Say otherwise and I'll tell a hundred cops that we don't know the ghost with the rifle."
"Okay, okay! You have five to go. Thanks, anyway, Simon Legree."
"De nada. You about finished messing around out there?"
"Yeah. The body is halfway back to the building. Well inside the field. I'm..."
An explosion that sounded like a shotgun made me flatten and aim the Beretta back toward the antique forklift. The cops started firing immediately. I was close to the building and scurried inside. I saw nobody aiming a weapon, but one of the red panels on the back of the forklift was lying on the sidewalk.
I yelled, "Tell the cops to hold their fire, dammit! No target! No target!"
Linda asked, "Ed? What was that? Are you all right?"
"Yeah. Tell the cops to save their ammo. One of the forklift batteries exploded. Scared the hell out of me. Sounded like a twelve-gauge going off."
Wallace said, "Hey, maybe that's why they started shooting, d'ya think?"
"Linda," I said, "I thought you liked men your own age or at least close to it."
She said, "Old guys pontificate all the time. At least this one can keep up with me in the mornings."
"Yeah? Well, you check him out later and see if he's got any polydactyl characteristics. That could explain a lot, couldn't it?"
In truth, the word was no more than a label for creatures that had extra fingers or toes or other digits, but I was betting that Wallace would have no idea what 'polydactyl' meant. There was silence for some moments until Linda started snickering. Wallace didn't know the word and he was too proud to ask about it.
I heard someone else on the flitter ask what the hell was so funny in the middle of something like this. At least four people told him to shut up and one guy said, "Pete, stuff like this starts hurting real fast if you don't keep it light, so shut up until you've been in it for real. You're just watching it on that TV thing. You don't know shit."
Linda called a halt to that discussion fairly quickly.
"When it's as bad as it gets, go with gallows humor," she said, perhaps to Pete or perhaps to everybody. "If you can't, you probably won't last very long on these missions. Now everybody shut up."
Everybody up there shut up as ordered. I saw smoke near the ceiling and said so.
"Steph," I said as I walked around the first floor and searched for smoke, "Can you find the fire? If it's bad, I either have to get back to the roof or wade into the street pretty quick."
"Working on it, Ed. Okay. I've found it in the wall above the front doors. Sporadic shortings indicate that an electrical line has been damaged."
"Thanks, Steph. Guess I'd better get the hell out of here fast, then. I see smoke coming from a hole I can't reach without a long ladder, and there isn't one of those in sight."
The sound of a gun cocking made me shut up and step back quickly and quietly as I looked around. I didn't see anyone, but there are damned few things in this world that aren't guns that can make that sound properly.
A woman's hysterical voice yelled, "I heard you walk in here and I heard you talkin' about fire, devil. That's right! I know who you are! I know you done come here for me, but I'll shoot you dead if you come anywhere near me, devil."
She was behind a desk to my right. I thought about trying to tiptoe past her, but there was broken glass and other crap all over the floor in all directions.
"Ed?" asked Linda.
I didn't answer her. Instead, I decided to play for time.
"You think others haven't tried that, ma'am?" I asked. "They've tried with bigger guns than that toy you're holding. What's your name?"
I backstepped away from the spot where I'd spoken, quietly sweeping the glass and other debris aside with my feet before putting them down.
"You think I'm some kinda fool!? I ain't tellin' you that, devil! If you ain't already got it, you ain't gonna get it!"
I sighed and said, "What I mean, ma'am, is that if you aren't on my list, I have to leave you for the others. All I need is your last name."
"No! Ain't no way I'm tellin' you shit, devil! Oh, no! Oh, my God! I'm sorry, God! I won't ever swear again, I promise!"
The woman began sobbing and moaned, "Please, God! I'm sorry!"
"Well damn," I said. "And I really mean that, ma'am. You know I can't take anyone while they're praying."
"I wasn't..."
I interrupted her with an angrily shouted, "Yes, you were, damn it! I heard you invoke God's name! Don't try to lie to me, woman!"
Apparently finally realizing the loophole I was trying hard to hand her, she screamed, "Yes sir! I'm prayin'! I'm prayin'!"
She began rattling off an inane collage of bits and pieces of pseudo bible verses and misquotes in a loud voice. She even included a bit of a country gospel song.
I said, "Well, okay, then. For now, anyway, lady, but if you stop praying I'll be on you like a duck on a junebug. You got that?"
"Yes! Yes! Go away! Go away! Please go away!"
"All right then. You just be praying your ass off when the others get here, too."
She moaned. "Why are you telling me that? What's the trick? I know who you are, devil! You take people for your own self. Why are you tellin' me to pray?"
Well, hell. Think fast, devil.
"Ma'am, do you really think there's any shortage of people like you? Do you really think I want more people like you around my place? Hell, no! But even you know I'm stuck with this job, so just do me a damned favor and repent, ma'am. Right now. Go to heaven and be someone else's problem, okay?"
Her consternation was evident. "I... Uh..."
I yelled, "Just shut up and start praying, lady! They'll be here any minute!"
"Yes!" she screamed. "Yes! I'll be prayin' when they get here! I promise!"
"Good enough," I said. "Now take it easy and keep the noise down. I have a helluva lot to do here tonight. Just sit there and save yourself quietly, okay?"
"Yes! I will! Uh... Can I thank you? Is that... Uh, legal?"
"Sure, lady. It won't help me any, but it might help you. Are we through here?"
"Yes! Please! Yes! We're through here!"
"All right, then. Goodbye and good luck, 'cause you're going to need it. Oh, and by the way, lady, tell somebody to put out the fire over the door. We don't want the damned building burning down around you, do we?"
"No! No, I'll tell somebody! Thank you, devil! Thank you!"
I left her babbling her prayers and wandered back up the fire stairs. In a relatively quiet area, I whispered, "Control, just checking in. There are still some live ones on the first floor. I'm hoping one of them will put out that fire, but don't let the cops relax."
"Copy that," said Wallace. "The fire hasn't spread and it's inside a block wall, so it may run out of fuel. Are you all right, devil?"
"Stop asking, please. I'll tell you if I'm not all right, and I really hated screwing with that woman's mind that way. Moving on."
"Copy that. Sorry, Ed."
"Don't apologize, either, please. I know you mean it, but it seems trivial as hell right now."
"Okay, Ed."
"Thanks. As I said, moving on."
"Copy that."
The second floor was much as I'd left it, except that now there were considerably more people in the rooms and hallways who were simply huddled singly and in small, sectarian groups against both the unknown and the known. It seemed likely to me that some would lose many of their prejudices when the only people left to cling to were the ones they'd called enemies before the arrival of the Amaran "threat"
.
I passed on to the third floor, which had previously been nearly empty of people other than guards. Many people who had gone up to the roof had discovered the cold night air and retreated from it. Some of them talked about others who had scavenged clothing from bodies and gone back up to the roof, anyway, if only to try to die from hypothermia rather than the disease, or to die under the stars instead of in the midst of the hell they'd created below.
One man sat on a box in the big room and patiently released the contents of canister after canister. They littered the floor around him. As I watched, he opened another one, and this time, instead of using it to scrawl on the floor or the boxes or the wall, he let it spew into his mouth and drank the stuff, perhaps hoping that by taking it in that manner it might kill him more quickly and less painfully.
A passing woman ran screaming into the room when she saw what he was doing, then seemed to reconsider her view of matters. She joined him on the box next to his and took the canister he offered her. I didn't wait to see if she'd have a drink with him.
Some were on their way to the first floor for the first time. Others were on their way upstairs, perhaps also for the first time. Something else they all had in common was the general disbelief that such a thing could have happened to them, of all people. It was supposed to have happened to their prophesied enemy, after all, and to all the inferior races of the Earth. It was supposed to have been carefully delivered as part of the master plan. 'One Earth' had been a euphemism for 'Our Earth'.
At first, people were confused as well as fearful. Some hunkered or stood and prayed aloud or silently. Some wrote long last letters and wills. But some were inspired to even greater glories of hate.
One such man was wandering the halls with an AK rifle, shooting anyone who so much as looked at him, talked, or even whimpered. I saw him deign not to shoot only two people in one room and haven't a clue as to why he spared them. He spared a woman who was pointing a rifle of her own at him, too, so he apparently wasn't feeling suicidal. He stopped a few feet from me and slapped in a new magazine, then continued his literal death march.
I thought about shooting him myself, but a few things stopped me. I didn't want to be discovered or have the woman fire hysterically in my direction and I wasn't sure that the guy wasn't actually dispensing charity, whether he knew it or not. I've seen pictures of Ebola victims.
Once he had disappeared into the stairwell, I continued my own trek to the roof past a few dozen people in the hallway and storage room who seemed to differ little or not at all from those on the other floors.
Some in the storage room were armed, but most were not. While they seemed unwilling to venture back into the third floor hallway, none of them seemed willing to sit too near the door to the roof stairs, either. That was fine with me. They'd unjammed the latch to keep the door shut and the cold outside. I walked up to the door and sat down to one side of it to wait for someone to open it.
It was almost as if they were all looking in my direction, hoping for a miracle from the one untainted person in the room. Oh, but I knew better than that. If discovered, I'd wind up like the biosuit guys. I remained silent and still, as did most of them.
Perhaps fifteen minutes went by before a man in his thirties entered the storage room and headed for the roof-stairs door. I got to my feet and waited as he opened the door and proceeded through it, but then he seemed to want to close it behind him.
I stiff-armed the very top of the door and it bounced out of his grasp, an action that drew only a slight interest from the gallery of watchers. He grabbed the doorknob and pulled it again, and again I stiff-armed the top. He glared at the door for a moment, then moved to examine first the door, then the doorframe.
I slipped past him during his examination of the door and stepped very carefully and quickly on the sides of the wooden stairs to avoid making them squeak or groan. I wanted to be off the stairs before he got pissed and slammed the door, which might attract attention from above and cause some traffic on the stairs.
At the top of the stairs, a man wearing scraps of biosuit over his lighter clothing suddenly blotted out the night sky. He was shivering with the effects of the cold night air so that his teeth were chattering audibly. For some moments, he seemed to be debating whether to return downstairs before he answered someone's call from the roof and left the stairway entrance.
When I finally exited the stairwell, I saw him sitting on the roof nearby with a woman. She also wore bits of biosuit over her clothes, and they were clinging to each other and trying to talk, but I could hear their teeth clattering from twenty feet away.
Chapter Forty
There was plenty of open space, which surprised me somewhat until I realized that I had no idea how many people may have been in the building. I walked quietly to one of the more remote areas, giving people a wide berth, until I stood alone near the rather noisy air conditioning system that supported the field generator.
I looked around, but saw only one flitter. The others were in stealth mode, just like me. Apparently the people on the roof had lost interest in shooting at it and were now simply staring at it. It must have been pretty uncomfortable for the men aboard.
I whispered, "Control, you see me?"
Wallace said, "Yeah, you're onscreen, Ed. This kind of imaging makes you look as if you're wearing a bright blue space suit. Are you... Oops. Sor... Oh, hell. Just give me a sitrep."
"Thanks for remembering to try to remember, Control. Every floor in there is like one of Dante's rings, but they're all the same ring. There are shooters, starers, whiners, sobbers, and crazy laughers. I guess with this group, there's no real change except that they're all gonna die soon and they know it."
"Why do you keep calling us 'Control', Ed? The intel mission was pretty much over when the canister leaked."
"Feels right. Habit. Thirty years of it, Control, with somebody monitoring the op and me as the point man, being called 'Dragonfly'. Always kind of liked that nick, even though it makes me think of all the times we couldn't use any of our names or known aliases in Europe. And the time that dumbassed Italian paper published lists of US operatives. Those were some damned interesting times."
"They sure were," said Linda. "Too damned interesting."
"Well, I see you didn't just hand the flitter over to him, boss."
"Nope. He's still a newbie. But he's learning fairly fast."
"He's just trying to impress you, ma'am. Ignore him and he'll think he has to try harder. Linda, when did symptoms begin showing up in the lab rats?"
There was silence for several moments, then, "Oh, dear God, no. Not you..?"
"No, Linda. I'm clean. I want to know, that's all. I have an idea."
"You're sure, Ed? Very sure? Absolutely?"
"Yes, I'm sure. Just listen, okay? I've been seeing what people do to each other for over thirty years, Linda. So have you. So have lots of people, but not necessarily the people who start this kind of shit. Not necessarily the people who send money to support 'the cause', whatever it may be, that masks and spreads hatred like this. We've always seen it, Linda. Us, the doctors and morticians, and all the other cleanup crews of the world. We need to get what's happening here on tape, from the time the first symptoms appear to the last nasty details and ugly death. How people treat each other and how they suffer at each others' hands. The remnants of the shootout on the first floor. Every damned little thing. Then we need to edit it for maximum impact and anonymously send a copy to every nutcase preacher, halfwit racist, and any damned body else who isn't altogether for peace on Earth and goodwill toward all men, including Amarans."
I took a breath and continued, "We can make the biggest, baddest, most disgusting snuff film ever made and beat the bastards over the head with it every goddamned day for as long as it takes. Friends and families of these particular deceased true believers should get the first copies of the videotapes. What do you think? Would it turn some of those assholes around if they could actually see the effects o
f what their 'preachers' advocate?"
Linda said, "Ed, I want you to come out of there. Now. I'm bringing the flitter down for you."
"Just hang on a minute, Linda. Are the other two flitters sentient, Steph?"
"No, Ed. Not yet. The potential is in them, though."
"So if they were wiped now, it would be no real loss, right?"
"I guess that would depend on your point of view, Ed."
"You heard what I want to do, Steph. I need one to send in probes, but I don't want the controlling flitter to suffer from the experience. Not even a non-sentient flitter should have to endure that. I'll want to wipe it afterward, because if this shit's in its memory and it becomes sentient... What do you think, Steph? This time I need your input and advice."
Linda said, "Ed, listen to me. Come out of there. Now, dammit!"
"Linda, I'm trying to snag a recording deal, here. I'm not going crazy, okay? I'm looking for a way to prevent this kind of craziness in the world."
Steph said, "You're talking about sending copies to other innocents, Ed. Human innocents."
"These dying people under my feet came from somewhere, Steph. I'm only proposing that we send back the results of their childrens' handiwork to try to prevent more of it. Every fundy preacher and ayatollah of every type and stripe, every right-wing rabble rouser with an agenda and a fat budget that needs fed, all of their minions..."
Steph said, "I'll supply a flitter and probes on one condition, Ed."
"A condition!? What kind of condition?"
"That you do as Linda says immediately and let someone else handle distribution if that videotape is ever made."
"How do I get their promise that it will be made, Steph?"
"I'm not sure you can, Ed. It may not be up to them."
Wallace entered the link on Linda's pad with, "If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, you are crazy, pal, and I'll personally guarantee you no deal at all if you open..."
I cut him off. "No! I'm not planning to open my suit, Wallace. Damn! If I have to face a goddamned psych later because of something you said on record, Wallace, you'd better hope I never see daylight again, 'cause I'll only use it to find you. Don't be stupid. My name isn't Jesus and I don't want to be a goddamned martyr, especially when there's going to be a whole warehouse full of them right under my feet! I just want to know what it will take to get the goddamned tape made and get it out there!"
3rd World Products, Inc., Book 3 Page 29
