by Justin Bell
“Shaving cream.”
“Shaving cream.”
Reeves stood there for a moment, expecting some other conversation to follow, but Nebers seemed to relish this idea of knowing something that he didn’t, and was in no rush to reveal it.
“So, why shaving cream?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Frank said gleefully. He reached over toward the counter and peeled what looked like a jewel case from its smooth surface. Holding it up, he rotated the plastic, square case as if it would automatically mean something to the colonel.
“Along with the genetic samples, some security footage was also brought back in Sergeant Davis’s case. Footage that I took the liberty of burning to DVD should you want to look it over.”
Reeves smiled. “Mighty kind of you, Frank.”
“What can I say?”
Reeves cracked open the case and looked at the silver disc inside, pulling it out and turning it over in his hand.
“I’ll let you watch it,” Nebers continued, “but the crib notes version is that apparently whoever launched this attack used shaving cream as a detonating agent, knowing that the Isopentane would carry the organisms into their hosts.”
Reeves narrowed his eyes, the comment that Nebers made triggering a memory in the recesses of his mind, a memory that was vague and uncertain. He pushed it the rest of the way down.
“This is just footage from Quincy, right?”
Nebers nodded.
“I’d hesitate to develop an entire working theory based on this one instance, but your information has been very helpful, Frank. Keep up the analysis, all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Nebers said, turning back toward the group as Reeves separated and walked back over toward the communications area. It took him a dozen strides to come up next to Leeza and put a hand on the back of her chair.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
“Doing well, sir,” she replied. “Comm channels have been pretty quiet today so far. Quiet in… in a bad way, sir. There’s no chatter out there, no matter how many frequencies I hop. It’s almost like… nothing is left. Nobody is saying anything.”
“Any more information on Graybar?”
“More of the same, I’m afraid,” Burns replied. “He was definitely working on some top secret black bag stuff down in Atlanta with the CDC. Stuff that they were trying to keep from the public eye.”
“Was National Security his only affiliation?”
“The only one we’ve tracked down so far, sir.”
Colonel Reeves leaned over and set the square jewel case down on the console with a flat slap.
“What’s this, sir?”
“Security footage, apparently,” Reeves replied. “I just want you to hold it for safe keeping, okay? I’ll review it a little later.”
“You got it, sir,” Burns replied, slipping the DVD from the console and sliding it into a drawer just above her legs. She dug around in the drawer for a key, pulled it out, and locked it, then stuffed the key into her pocket.
“Read my mind as usual, Lieutenant,” Reeves said. “Keep up the good work, I need to sit down and have a chat with Agent Wakefield.”
Reeves broke away and walked toward the entrance to the hallway. Those intel geeks were never around when you actually needed them.
***
What were the chances? A thousand to one? A million to one? Rodney didn’t like to think about it, though as he and his wife walked down the shoulder of Interstate 95, he couldn’t really help himself. After all, everywhere around them was deadly silent, the utter and complete lack of noise attributed to the end of the world. He and Joan had seen it first-hand. Then they’d tried to escape it.
They were still trying.
Their gated community had been a godsend back in the day, a full-service neighborhood where they had people to mow the lawn, deal with the trash, clean the gorgeous blue chlorine pool. There was even a golf course and a fitness center that Rodney never used, which is why he was breathing hard in the cool December air as he and Joan walked down the shoulder of the highway.
Everyone in their community was dead, or so they assumed. They’d gone house to house and nobody had answered any doorbells or door knocking and the times they’d actually been brave enough to look in the window, they’d seen mostly bodies. There had even been a corpse floating in the pool, a faint red cloud surrounding the person’s head like a darkened halo. Almost in a trance they’d gotten in their car and started driving, not sure where to go, but feeling like their home was suddenly unsafe. Something was happening, and they needed to get far away. Not only that, but they needed to get to their son. Their son was living on his own now, married, and he’d given them three beautiful grandchildren, but they hadn’t been able to reach them on the phone. Driven by pure parental instincts, they got in their car and started driving, not even thinking about how much gas they had or if they’d be able to get more while in transit.
The car had died about twelve hours after they’d left, and so many dead and discarded vehicles scattered the roads that they couldn’t pull off and get to a gas station. So they spent the night in their car, and started out on foot, desperate to get south, to find their son, to be reunited with their family.
And Rodney kept on going back to the odds. They’d seen so much death in the past few days, he couldn’t fathom how both he and his wife escaped it. There was no way they should have. Or could have.
Yet, they had. Million to one odds and here they were, walking down I-95, looking for their son.
Morning light glinted off the metal of an approaching vehicle, a glimmering shape that actually appeared to be moving, the first moving vehicle they’d seen since they left home. It continued its slow approach toward them, growing larger as it came, navigating around the wrecked and discarded vehicles clogging the roadway. As it grew closer, Rodney could see it more clearly, he could see the angles of its hood, the color of the paint, and the familiar rack of blue lights mounted to the roof.
Several feet away, the car swung to a gentle halt, easing into a graceful stop, as far on the shoulder as it could without hitting any of the resting cars. Rodney smiled when he saw him, gesturing to his wife and scrambling up the grass embankment, back toward the pavement, waving his hand toward the police officer.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey there!”
The driver’s side door swung open and the officer stepped out, adjusting his hat over the mirrored sunglasses, watching the older couple approach, struggling with the incline, but pressing onward just the same.
“Where are you folks off to?” the officer asked, resting a hand at his hip where his pistol sat tucked neatly in the leather holster.
“North Carolina,” the man said through gasping breaths. “We need to get to North Carolina.”
The policeman drew back, putting fingers on the bill of his cap. “That’s a long way from here, sir,” he said. “Bound to run into plenty of trouble along the way.”
Rodney shrugged as if the thought of doing anything else simply hadn’t occurred to him. “Our son is there, officer. We… we have to get to him. We don’t know what else to do.”
“I understand,” the policeman said. He looked around the street, eyes roaming over the various vehicles scattered about. “Have you thought about borrowing another vehicle? That will get you there a lot faster than walking from here all the way from New Jersey to North Carolina, and I think it’s fair to say the people around here aren’t using them.”
Rodney looked at Joan whose face was draining of color at the horrific thought of stealing a dead person’s vehicle.
“Joan, sweety,” Rodney said quietly. “The world is different now. We have to do what’s best for us and for Buck. We need to get to Buck and make sure he’s okay.”
Joan nodded softly, but didn’t speak. She hadn’t spoken in well over twenty-four hours and Rodney sometimes wondered if she would ever speak again. She was a gentle woman, a kind mother and wife and the last thing he
wanted was for her to be hurt. It was too late for that. She’d been hurt the minute she’d seen the first dead body and it hadn’t gotten any better from there. Rodney wanted to find Buck not just for Buck’s sake but for his wife’s as well, and the longer this journey took, the further he felt his wife was drawing away from him.
“I’ll help you folks, okay?” the officer asked.
“So you’re okay?” Rodney asked as they followed the man across the pavement toward one of the cars askew on the side of the road. The policeman shrugged.
“I seem to be,” he replied. “Couldn’t tell you how or why. I spent an hour at the dispatch station trying to reach other cars, but nothing.” He stopped suddenly, no longer walking or speaking, turning his ear toward the northbound lane of the highway.
“What?” Rodney asked, pausing for a moment.
“I hear something,” the officer replied. “Engines.”
“More cars?” Rodney asked, excited, looking in the same direction. Sure enough he could see the bright glint of light reflecting on metal way off in the distance, a glimmering mirage even on the cold December morning.
“I don’t think they’re cars,” the policeman replied, and Rodney saw his hand drift toward the pistol at his hip, a motion that made him suddenly afraid.
The engines rose in volume, a loud, screaming pitch as they neared, and Rodney knew then that they weren’t cars at all, they were motorcycles, and several of them, various different blurred shapes catching the light as they careened toward them across the smooth asphalt.
“They’re coming awful fast,” Rodney muttered, putting his arm up to move Joan from the road.
“They probably don’t see us; we should move off the road,” the policeman said, and unsnapped his pistol, sliding it free from its holster.
“What are you afraid of?” Rodney asked.
The officer glanced at him. “Situations like this do strange things to people,” he replied. “I just want to be sure.”
In full view now, the crowd of vehicles continued their swift pace, bearing down on the three people, engines screaming in the cool air, echoing up into the sky above. All in one motion, the group of vehicles seemed to shift their path, guiding their bikes toward the trio even as they made their way toward the shoulder of the highway, moving further along the grass embankment.
“Keep going,” the officer stuttered, passing his weapon into his right hand, resting his index finger on the trigger guard. He held a Glock 17 semi-automatic and his knuckles tensed around the contoured grip in anticipation of a potential showdown.
“I’ve never seen motorcycles like those before,” Rodney said as they came closer, the strange paneled armor now visible in the morning light. These bikes didn’t have windscreens or aerodynamic styling, they were layered with manufactured steel.
“I don’t like this,” the cop said, moving his free hand to wrap around the other, clutching the handle of the pistol. “Keep going, further down!”
Rodney and Joan shuffled left, moving further down the grass slope, further out of the line of traffic, squeezing between two cars for shelter. The officer followed them down, stopping by the trunk of a car, lowering himself slightly, resting his arms on the trunk, drawing a bead on the approaching bikes. His lips parted slightly as he prepared to bark some kind of command, words he wasn’t even sure he could form, yelling at a group that probably couldn’t even hear him, but what else could he do? They were almost on top of them, the width of their group taking up the entire four lane highway, side to side, a swarm of metal on metal.
“Get down!” the cop shouted, turning toward Rodney and Joan. The old man narrowed his eyes, looking at the group of motorcycles, and he saw it. Just barely, a subtle shift of motion, but sure enough there it was, a rifle poking out from beside one of the diagonal slopes of layered steel. It fired as Rodney watched, belting out a staccato spray of yellow muzzle flashes, rapid fire. Turning back toward the group, the cop fired his pistol several times, a pop pop pop nearly drowned out by the approaching motors and automatic gunfire. His nine-millimeter slugs clanged off the metal armor, spinning off into the air, but he took the full brunt of the automatic rifle, leaping backwards with the impact, feet sweeping out from under him, throwing him down toward the ground.
“Oh my!” Joan shouted, putting a hand to her mouth, and Rodney was already turning toward her, pushing her from the grass, toward a row of trees a few feet away, desperately shuffling, leading her and guiding her to some kind of shelter, but he knew the trees were too far away, the motorcycles were too close and for a brief moment he was absolutely certain that down in North Carolina, their son was already dead, he was in heaven and they were coming to join him.
More automatic fire shattered the air, the two survivors, a one in a million chance, thrashing in a clumsy circle and falling to the wet grass, the roaring engines of the motorcycles continuing on past, fading into eternity.
***
“See, friend Javitz?” Scarface said, his twisted and torched smile revealing stained teeth. “I told you we would have some fun along the way, did I not?”
“You were spot on, Scarface, my man,” Javitz replied, nodding. “Spot on.”
The motorcycles were stopped at the side of the road on an exit ramp a few miles south of where they had run down the police officer, Rodney, and Joan, the engines still ticking as they cooled down from the frantic run south down 95. Javitz wiped a shine of sweat from his forehead, an odd occurrence in December, but controlling these armored beasts had turned out to be a lot harder than he thought, and he was working up a sweat.
And a hunger.
“We need some gas and some chow,” he said, nodding toward the town beyond. “We should see what’s shaking here.”
Scarface nodded. “Da. Agreed. Maybe they even have bar. It’s been a long time since I had some good Vodka.”
“Then let’s shake it,” Javitz said, smirking, and they gunned the engines, firing up the bikes again to head into town.
***
Agent Wakefield, Sergeant Smith, and Agent Bryce walked down the dimly lit hallway, shirts untucked, ties untied, in full casual mode after three full days of hectic work with barely four hours of sleep to show for it.
“You find any dirt on that Craig guy yet?” Wakefield asked, turning toward him. “I don’t like his smug superiority complex.”
“Our resources are strapped,” Bruce replied. “I’m having a tough time reaching anyone at home base. This is bad mojo, Wake. Big time bad mojo.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” a voice boomed in the narrow passage. Both men halted, looking up into the faint light and saw Colonel Reeves rounding the corner, his broad shoulders seemingly filling the entire space between the two walls.
Two of the men halted their forward progress, but Davis took another two steps forward, putting himself between the colonel and the two intelligence agents.
“There a problem, Colonel?” Davis asked.
“Yes there is a damn problem,” Colonel Reeves hissed in reply. “For two days those two have been slinking around in dark corners, whispering sweet nothings to each other, acting all ‘need to know’ and ‘top secret.’ That stops right now.”
“Colonel, you’ve been in this man’s Army for long enough to know—”
“Don’t give me that, Sergeant,” Reeves said. “You know what’s going on out there. You know more than most. You’ve seen it. Can you really come back from what you saw in Boston, look me in the eyes and tell me that a chain of command still exists? That there is such a thing as classified intel? Our population is on the verge of collapse and if anyone has information that will help keep the human race from snuffing out of existence, the rest of us need to know it.”
Davis glanced back at the two men. They returned their looks at him, then peered at each other.
“There is no more compartmentalization, gentlemen,” Reeves said. “There’s only one box now, and it’s humankind. You two have spent forty-eight
hours undermining my command and furthering your own twisted little agendas, and as a result, we’re no further along in solving this thing. We need to pool our resources, or I will consider you enemies of the state and have you locked up, do you understand me?”
“Colonel, you don’t have the—”
“Show me someone who outranks me, Davis. Do it. Point me in their direction.”
Davis remained where he was, standing firm, his back straight and shoulders squared. To his credit, his gaze at the colonel didn’t waver or falter, he showed no sign of subservience.
“Fair point, Colonel,” he finally replied. “Shall we grab a conference room? Perhaps it’s time we had a little conversation.”
Chapter 5
Aldrich, Connecticut felt like he had never left.
Jackson pushed through the trees, cutting through the thick forest that separated the access road from the neighborhood surrounding the Martin family farm. “Neighborhood” was an overstatement, in all actuality, as the houses stood scattered miles apart, long stretches of grassy meadow standing between them and their nearest farm house. It had been about a three mile trek to get here, and besides stopping once to listen to some strange noises back the way he came, Jackson had moved quickly and efficiently. Switching between jogging, walking, and flat out running when the foliage allowed it, he’d made the three mile voyage in a little less than an hour, all told.
Narrow trees separated as he pressed them apart, stepping through the gap out onto the flat brown grass of the vast backyard acreage of the Martin farm. He immediately felt a sense of comfort and ease, though he couldn’t help but notice that no machinery was running and there was absolutely no activity anywhere on the farm’s land. This time of the morning was generally rife with activity. Lisa’s dad on the tractor, Lisa herself carrying food and water to the animals, under the faint pink glow of morning, there should have been something happening.
