This time Ron and I went on the op. We both wore full beards and moustaches, long hair, and bushy eyebrows. He chose brown and I black. We packed an extra set of all black clothing in sports bags, along with a pair of Z helmets.
Ron headed out first in the Keller van and I followed in my car. The first thing I noticed was the absence of military checkpoints. All lanes were full of cars and a few trucks but I supposed many folks were visiting the stores for the first time in a week. The parking lots we passed were jammed full.
The news said workers spent overtime restocking shelves from bulging warehouses.
With the stolen van in front, I drove to the countryside at the end of Moss Street, where I parked under a walnut tree and hopped into the passenger seat of the van.
As Ron drove to the Alton Building, we passed a side street I heard a burglar alarm and the flashing lights of patrol cars rushing to the scene.
“Guess the cops’ll be busy tonight.”
Ron drove into an alley and parked. In the van, Ron and I changed into black clothing from the bags we brought with us. Then he drove to the parking lot behind the Alton Building, where we put on a pair of Andy’s Z helmets, the ones with communications that allowed the two of us to share conversations in private. I put on a dark blue backpack for whatever we’d find.
The only lights on in the Alton Building came from the tenth floor. Somebody was putting in overtime, or the cleaning people had left the lights on.
I used my gloved fingers to key in the combination from Mourtan to gain access to the building and Ron placed a cover over the keypad. When we exited later, he’d issue a wireless command and the cover would explode, destroying evidence of tampering. Of course, that was tampering itself but we didn't want the police to think we used the combination. Let ‘em guess.
We entered the building and used our flashlights to go up the stairs to the sixth floor. I keyed in another combination on the keypad on the glass doors leading to the lobby of Humans Only. Ron adhered a cover over it as well.
Ron took one hallway and I another. We weren't sure where to go. Fifteen seconds later, Ron's voice came in my helmet, “Will Records do?”
“Be right there,” I replied.
We encountered a smaller keypad at the beige door to the room with the label Records. Ron attached two wires to the keypad and held a black box in his left hand.
“Douse the flashlights,” I ordered.
Soon we stood in the dark while we waited for the red numbers on the box as they changed rapidly. And waited. In forty-five seconds, the numbers stopped changing and a button changed to green. Ron pressed that combination on the pad. I pulled the handle down and the door opened.
Our flashlights illuminated a safe at the far wall and one locked file cabinet on the right wall. I examined the labels on each drawer of the cabinet. We didn't know what we wanted but when I found one labeled training vids, I wondered if it held any secrets.
“Ron, try your opener on this one.”
Ron came beside me and placed the electrodes on the locked cabinet. In thirty seconds the button turned green. He used the combination on the lock, opened the cabinet, and shined his light inside. Besides training manuals in binders, we found eight training vids on disks.
I pawed through the first file but couldn’t find anything obvious.
Ron asked, “Shall I pack the vids?”
“Might as well.”
He pulled the vids out and put them on top of the cabinet.
We spent another ten minutes searching through other drawers of the cabinet but nothing popped out.
Damn! I had hoped we’d find something incriminating.
I looked at the timer on my wrist. “We've been here long enough. Pack the vids.”
Then I turned around and presented my back to him. He slipped the vids into my backpack and zipped it closed. Then he tapped me on the head.
We reversed our path out of the building and entered the van.
I took off the backpack and put it on the floor in front of me.
He drove the van to the countryside to the tree where I had parked my car. There, Ron tossed a package through an open window of the van while I carried the backpack into the driver’s seat of my car. After Ron took the passenger seat and I drove away, I saw a flash of light in my mirror.
Good ol’ Pyronex.
When we returned to the ops center, Vincent let us in. I showed him our take and we divided up the eight vids among the four of us, Vincent, Zetto, Ron, and me. I took the dorm monitor, Ron, the kitchen, and Vincent and Zetto used those in the planning room.
Three hours later, Zetto yelled, “Bingo!”
I yelled across the doorways, “Whatcha got?”
“A doozy,” he replied.
When I got to the planning room, Ron and Vincent had already taken seats.
Zetto projected the image on the far wall.
Coocher spoke in front of eight people, five men and three women, in a classroom.
“I shouldn't say this,” said Coocher, “but we have plans to wipe out enough damned liberal voters in the city to change the votes.”
“What do you mean?” said a feminine voice.
“I can't tell you specifics,” said Coocher, “but think illness. And don't worry about catching it. We've installed filters on our water supply to make sure nobody in this building gets it.”
He continued his lecture on how to recruit volunteers to join the organization.
“Off,” I said. I turned to Zetto. “Can you make copies of just the incriminating portion?”
“Sure,” he replied.
I looked at the three men.
“Folks, this is the smoking gun we need.”
I wrote another letter from Albert Poors and included a video of the part of Guy Coocher talking about an illness. After wiping everything to avoid leaving any fingerprints or DNA, and spraying it all with bleach, I labeled the package “To Sheila Fish, from Albert Poors.” This time Ron wore gloves when he took it to the Channel One office.
The next morning, I saw the vid in the opinion part of Channel One’s website.
Two hours later, Sheila tagged me.
“Damn! That latest vid of Coocher was over the top. Where the hell did you get it?”
“Can’t tell ya,” I answered.
“Will you ever?”
“Can’t say. Ever is a long time.”
“Right. Well, anyway, thanks buddy.”
“It’s good to hear your voice again,” I said. “I take it you’re over your illness.”
“Yeah. Back at the grind.”
I heard a voice in the distance yell her name.
“Gotta run,” she said.
We disconnected.
The news said twelve percent of the population of the city now resided in those burial pits. Hardest hit were the news staffs, medical staffs, and government offices. This was the greatest disaster on Rossa―ever.
When the polls showed the Freedom from Aliens Bill would pass by a narrow margin, I sighed. The number of rural voters outnumbered those in Zor and La Seille. My efforts had not been enough.
The news was a downer, to say the least. None of us in the ops center had much to say.
Chapter 37
The next day, I put on jeans and a white short-sleeved T-shirt.
Then I tagged Dr. Newton’s office. Much to my surprise, she answered right away.
“Yes, Jake?”
“We lost one person here. Can I pick up an injector and one dose of vaccine?”
“Why not four doses?”
“Can’t tell you that.”
“Did anybody come down with VB?” she asked.
“We lost one woman and another man is sick. He’s the one we need the vaccine for. Oh, and another dose for my twenty pound pet.” I thought of Alena. “Ah, we might need another dose too.”
“The vaccine is best used on those who don’t have symptoms yet,” she said. “But we’ve been instructed to vaccinate everyone except those who c
aught it and survived.”
“I learned the mercons seem to be immune.”
“Hmm, that’s interesting. Where’d you hear about the…others?”
Her avoidance of the word mercons alerted me to the presence of staff around her.
“I can’t tell you that. Maybe later, in person.”
She added, “There might be some protection if you’ve been exposed to the virus. It works differently in some individuals.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
I made a mental calculation. Ron, Vincent, Zetto, Alena, Monk. Oh, and me.
“Can you have an injector and five and a half doses ready for pickup?”
“I can have them available in an hour,” she replied. “We’re swamped here with patients who are afraid they have VB. In half of them, it’s just fatigue from nervous tension. Why five and a half?”
“Can’t answer that. I’ll come by in an hour. And thanks, doc. I really appreciate your work.”
“I know. See you then.”
At the appointed time, I drove myself to her office.
“Do you have an appointment?” asked the chubby female receptionist.
“Yes, with Dr. Newton.”
She looked me over. “Are you Jake?”
I nodded.
“Have a seat, please. She’ll be with you in a minute.”
People sat on every chair in the waiting room. When one became available, I noticed a woman with two small girls standing and I let her take it. I stood against one wall.
After twenty minutes, a nurse came through a door with a bag. She glanced around at those waiting and locked eyes on me.
“Are you Jake?”
I nodded and she handed me the bag. I peeked in it and saw an injector and some vials for it.
The nurse added, “Sorry about the delay.”
“Thanks again.”
I drove around several blocks before heading up Ambassador and left on Shoreline Drive. When I pulled up to the gates of the mercon embassy, several human soldiers in camouflage uniforms checked my ID.
“Why the guards?” I asked.
The man with the gun on his hip looked bored and tired when he answered, “Demonstrators.”
That made sense. I had seen on the telly that some folks blamed the mercons for VB. Conspiracy theorists were having a field day.
The same response came from the mercons guards inside the gate. I presented my ID. After one look at it, the officer in charge let me in.
I parked in the small courtyard parking lot and entered the front door.
And everything changed.
The walls glowed white, which I expected, but what I didn’t expect were the statues. In recessed places around the walls rested a dozen busts of mercons. In front of each bust I could make out a name. Since they didn’t mean anything to me, I glanced over them.
In front of a desk sat a small dark mercon receptionist. I couldn’t tell the gender.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Can I speak with Alena Dani, please?”
“And you are?”
“Her father, Jake Dani.”
“One moment.”
He or she, whatever it was, pressed a few buttons on a console on the desk. “There’s a Jake Dani to see you.” It nodded and looked at me.
“She’ll be here in a minute.” It pointed to a row of seats.
I didn’t have to sit long before Alena came through a set of the double doors, wearing dark blue slacks and a light brown shirt.
She rushed up with open arms and we embraced. We were all we had of a family on Rossa now. My parents and grandparents were on Earth and Leanna had lost both parents.
We held the hug for a long time. Neither of us seemed willing to end it. Finally, we separated.
“How are they treating you?”
“Like royalty!” she replied. “I get everything I want.”
“I brought you something,” I said as I stooped to pick up the bag on a seat.
“What?” Alena asked.
I opened the bag and extracted the injector.
“Raise your sleeve,” I instructed.
She did.
I loaded the injector with a vial of vaccine and pumped the handle several times until it resisted. Then I pressed the injector to her forearm, activated it by the button, and heard a hiss as the vial emptied.
“Feel anything?” I asked.
“Only a full feeling under my skin.”
“You may be protected against VB with your ‘special’ DNA but we need to make sure. You are now vaccinated against VB.”
She lowered her sleeve.
“Can I see your quarters?”
“Sure,” she replied with a smile as she fastened the button on the end of her sleeve.
I repacked the injector in the bag and followed Alena, as she led the way through the double doors and down a hallway. The ceiling was low but then again every mercon I knew was much shorter than most humans. Only human children were consistently shorter. My daughter stooped as she walked, barely avoiding scraping her head. She was an inch taller than me but I stooped too.
When we got to her suite, I wasn’t surprised. She had decorated her suite much like I expected of her, as in not much. She was a researcher first and not interested in housekeeping. Everything looked like it had one purpose. A bed, a refrigerator, a dining table, a closet. In one room, I saw an upholstered chair with a telly in front of it. Next to the chair was a small table with a half glass of brownish liquid.
“Care to see my lab?” she asked with a big grin.
“Wouldn’t want to miss that.”
We went down the same hallway to another room across the hall, ducking as we walked. She opened the door. I didn’t know what to expect. On hard black surfaces above rows of green drawers lay an assortment of instruments. From my university days, I recognized a centrifuge but not the bigger machines.
“This is where I extract DNA,” she said as she pointed to the glassware. On the surface of the table in a glass-covered enclosure rested several mercon dolls. Rubber gloves extended from the inside front of the glass cage.
“From here, I put the samples in the centrifuge,” she pointed again. “Then I extract the residue and inject it into here.” She patted a metal box.
“It replicates the portions of the DNA so I get enough of a sample, which I then inject into here.” She pointed to another metallic box.
Then she traveled on foot to the end of the row and pointed to a monitor and chair.
“The results come out here.”
“What are you working on now?”
“Mostly additional data to support my thesis.”
“And what revelation do you have next?”
She looked at me. “You’d better sit down for this.” She pointed to a stool.
I sat on it and gave her my attention.
“I’ve examined ancient mercon DNA that the ambassador was so gracious to provide from their museum and have narrowed the time window down. Dad, I think modern humans and modern mercons have a common ancestor, from about two million seven hundred thousand years ago. I think they were mercons but their DNA is slightly different from what we see today.”
#
When I returned to the ops center, I carried the bag inside.
Vincent said, “We still don’t have any idea where Hoskins is. Coocher is on his way to Parliament.”
“How do you know that?”
But he just grinned in response.
“I want Ron and you to come into the planning room,” I ordered.
There I used the injector to give Vincent, Ron and Zetto a dose of vaccine. I handed the injector to Ron and rolled up my sleeve before he gave me a shot too.
Ron added, as he pumped the injector and queried, “Have you seen Alena?”
I nodded. “She’s fine. Having a good time at the embassy. I vaccinated her too.”
I grabbed the injector.
“Where’s Monk?”
Ron an
swered, “I saw him napping on your bunk.”
I went into the dorm and sure enough, there lay my little furry buddy. I took out the small bottle labeled “for twenty pound pet” and loaded the injector with the bottle. Then I pushed aside his fur on his back and pressed the injector close to his skin. It didn’t take long and as it hissed, Monk’s head turned to see what was going on. I finished and put the injector back in the bag and smoothed his fur.
“Hope this works on you, Monk. I’d hate to lose you so soon after you came into my life.”
He lay back and closed his eyes. Guess naptime was not over.
I picked up the bag and headed out the door, saying to Ron as I left, “I’m headed to Dr. Newton’s.” It was standard procedure to keep the other team members informed whenever anyone left the center.
When I got there, I carried the injector bag inside.
“Your name?” asked the receptionist.
“Jake Dani. But I don’t have an appointment.”
“Do you want to schedule one? The waiting time may be a couple hours, I’m afraid.”
I put the bag on her desk.
“Can you make sure Dr. Newton gets this?”
“What is it?”
“An injector she loaned me. And some empty vials.”
The gal took the paper bag and said to an aide as she handed over the bag, “This needs autoclaving.”
I didn’t stick around long enough to hear any more.
Instead of heading back to the ops center, I stopped at my apartment to pick up clean clothes. The same three outfits in the center bored me by now.
Tut reported no visitors but I checked every room anyway. After grabbing several items from my bedroom, I headed to the stairs in the center of my apartment.
“Monk’s doin’ fine, Tut. We should come home in a few days.”
Chapter 38
“Hey, gang! They’re passing out the vaccine!” yelled Zetto.
Ron, Vincent, and I rushed to the planning room where Zetto displayed the newscast on the wall.
An aerial view showed a snake of people waiting in line for blocks at the public high school. Other lines wound their way out the door of the university basketball court.
The scene changed to show an apartment manager unlocking a door as several cops in the blue of Zor Metro Police waited in the hallway. Two guys went in wearing the same all-green outfits I’d seen so many times before. Others stayed outside the apartment. The scene changed to show a man in the hallway with a breathing mask speaking into a microphone.
Humans Only: A Jake Dani Novel (Jake Dani/Mike Shapeck Book 2) Page 22
