Ill Wind

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Now the whole planet was paying for it.

  Curses erupted around him. Jake drew in a monumental breath and shouted, “Burn Oilstar to the ground!”

  The refinery complex was a nightmare of fractionating towers, piping, valves, ladders, and catwalks. Small white Cushman carts sat abandoned next to enormous metal contraptions. The admin building and research facilities stood in the center of the complex, like an oasis surrounded by the industrial no-man’s-land.

  Huge natural gas, crude oil, and gasoline storage tanks rested on the sides of the hills, great metal reservoirs closed off by metal caps. No doubt some of them still held viable fuel—it would have been a precious commodity if the petroplague continued to devour only octane, but with other long-chain polymers falling to pieces, no engine culd still function even if it did have uncontaminated fuel.

  But the gas could still burn. Oh yes, Jake thought, it would still burn.

  * * *

  Inside the bioremediation wing of the Oilstar complex, Mitch Stone stared helplessly at the scrawled notes in front of him. He had used a metal bar to break open the locked drawers of Alex Kramer’s desk, ransacking the original lab books and notes the microbiologist had left behind. The official data and quarterly reports had already been copied and sent to the plague research centers around the country, but there had to be more. Mitch went straight to the source. There had to be more!

  “Dammit, Alex! Are you doing this to me on purpose?”

  Mitch stared at the handwritten comments. Kramer’s computer—nothing but warped circuit boards, wires, and glass CRT—sat on the desk. The diskettes lay dissolved in unrecognizable piles. But Mitch knew that the old-timer kept actual logbooks. Mitch had teased Alex about it before, but now he blessed the old man for his prehistoric ways.

  As he flipped through the pages and stared at the data, despair poured through him. He held the lined paper up to the light from the window. The other pane in Alex’s office had fallen out, dropping three stories to shatter on the ground below. Wind whistled into the room.

  Emma Branson paced in front of the desk, waiting for him to answer her. “Stone, are you even more incompetent than I thought? We’ve got to give them something! You were involved in this from square one, don’t you remember anything?”

  Helpless, Mitch wanted to shrug and make some excuse, but Branson looked ready to claw his eyes out. She would see right through any patronizing explanations. “I was involved with it, but… but I worked mainly on the management end of things. I attended the meetings and took care of public relations. Alex was the one doing the work!” He swallowed, realizing how stupid he sounded. He ran a hand through his itchy hair; he hadn’t had a trim in over a month.

  “That’s not the way you made it appear in your reports,” Branson said with ice in her voice.

  Mitch averted his eyes and looked again at the scrawled data. It took a while, but once he recognized the pattern, he felt too sick and embarrassed even to point it out to Emma Branson.

  “Well, what is it?” she demanded.

  “Uh, it appears that Dr. Kramer faked his data. He wrote incorrect results in his notebooks.”

  “Are you sure?” she said.

  Mitch jabbed his finger at the columns of numbers. She could see it for herself. The figures were simply placeholders, taking up space; Kramer had jotted down the square root of two, pi, and others. Branson’s eyes widened, and Mitch wondered if she was going to fly into a rage or break down and cry.

  Before she could react, the sound of an exploding natural gas tank shook the room. The thwump came first, loud enough to rattle the other window in Kramer’s office. Booms echoed around the refinery complex.

  Branson dropped the notebook and pushed toward the window. “What the hell is going on out there?” she said.

  Outside, a towering ball of blue-orange flames roiled to the sky. Flaming, molten shards of metal clattered to the ground. One of the fractionating towers buckled from the explosion.

  A crowd roared below. Tiny forms, people, scrambled on the gasoline reservoirs and the crude oil storage tanks. Were they going to burn those, too?

  “Son of a bitch! Peasants bearing torches, can you believe it?” Branson said. “Come on, we’ve got to get back to the Admin building. I’ve still got my own private guards there.”

  Flustered, Mitch said, “Yes, Ma’am.”

  He followed, leaving Alex’s doors open. Gunshots rang out as Branson’s guards responded to the assault, but their guns fired only a few times before the weapons seized up. The shouts grew louder.

  Before he and Branson made it down the three flights of stairs, they heard breaking glass below. “Oh, shit!” Mitch’s voice wavered.

  Branson looked ready to dive into the fray herself and start tearing the saboteurs limb from limb. “Up the stairwell. We’ll go to the second floor and down the back. Maybe we can get out the emergency exit.”

  Mitch ran after her, pursued by the sounds of smashing and yelling. When they reached the other stairwell and hurried down, the bottom door burst open. Four people charged in.

  Mitch froze, hoping the intruders wouldn’t look up. But his luck didn’t hold. One of the women glanced up the stairs, spotting both of them. Her face ignited with glee. “There they are! Two of them!”

  Mitch whirled and scrambled up the stairs, leaving Branson behind. The old woman came panting after him.

  Mitch’s mind whirled. He had seen plenty of those stupid suspense movies where the victims continued to run up the stairs while being chased. But what other choice did they have? The people were below, swarming up.

  “Floor four,” he said. “There’s the vault! I think it’s open—I cracked it this morning to get at Alex’s records. If we get in there, they’ll never be able to reach us.”

  Branson stumbled beside him. Below, the attackers had reached the second-floor landing.

  By the time he got to the fourth floor, Mitch had gained a good lead on Branson. He ran down the corridors, ducked through an open typing-pool complex of dissolving cubicles, toward the document vault in back. The heavy steel door stood partway open.

  He glanced behind him and saw Branson turning the corner, her arms outstretched, gasping. Her hair had come undone, and she had flung off both shoes as she stuttered forward. Fewer than ten steps behind her, came the roaring mob.

  Mitch ducked into the vault; a dim, battery-powered emergency lamp flickered from the ceiling. If he waited for Branson, he would never get the heavy steel door closed before the others wrenched it out of his hands. He couldn’t hesitate. He tugged at the handle and hauled the door closed, digging his feet into the floor.

  Emma Branson reached the vault just as it shut. She screamed at him through the tiny gap before the pursuers grabbed her shoulders. Mitch jerked the vault door closed with the last of his strength. The combination would reset itself automatically, and none of these people would ever get inside. He heard muffled screaming, but he could make out no words.

  He didn’t want to know what was happening to Emma Branson.

  Mitch slid down the back wall and sat in the corner, spilling confidential documents marked PROMETHEUS around him as he shivered uncontrollably. Finally, he began to laugh as he realized that he was safe. He had found the papers.

  * * *

  Jake Torgens’s face stung. His eyebrows and much of his hair had been singed in the monstrous natural gas explosion. At least fifteen people had died, their flaming rag-doll bodies flying through the air, spraying droplets of smoking blood.

  But the strike force would do what had to be done, regardless of casualties. This fire was going to be an environmental catastrophe of its own, but at the moment Jake considered that concern secondary. Some of the environmentalists had even cheered the petroplague as a final solution to the worldwide problems of industrial pollution. Jake figured they might eventually be right, but for the moment they had their heads up their asses.

  Several protestors came to Jake with metal bucket
s and glass bottles of contaminated gasoline they had poured out of the sealed storage tanks. They had opened the valves and let the trapped fuel spill down the hill. Once his people got clear, Jake would order the whole thing blown sky high.

  Polly ran up to him. A fat woman who described herself as “pleasantly plump,” Polly had a mild manner; but when her anger got stoked, she was ready to kill. Grime streaked her face, and her eyes were bright.

  “We found two of them inside the research building there. One locked himself inside a vault upstairs, and we can’t get to him, but we caught the old witch, Branson. She’s still alive. In a lot of pain. Should we bring her down?”

  “No,” Jake said. “Leave her upstairs, and make sure she stays there. Tie her to the vault door and get everyone else out of the building.” He raised his eyebrows at Polly. “You know what to do with witches, don’t you?”

  Polly grinned. She took one of the buckets of gasoline and ran toward the building.

  * * *

  Black smoke poured in through the air vents of the vault. Mitch Stone coughed, then scrambled across the floor. The carpet itself was smoldering. The pages turned brown on the documents lining the metal shelves.

  The whole building would burn to the ground. Mitch would be trapped inside this vault like a roast in an oven. He had to get out. The thick smoke burned his eyes. He couldn’t breathe.

  When he grabbed the release bar, the metal was so hot it sizzled the flesh on his palms. He shrieked. Mitch fumbled with a roll of papers to shield his skin and pushed down on the release bar again. He forced the door open.

  And the blackened clawlike arm of Emma Branson fell inside. The skin on her skeletal body was charred to paperlike ash. Her mouth still open, she slumped into the gap.

  Mitch staggered backward. The documents in the vault ignited with a flash all around him. The furnace flames blasted inside.

  Chapter 51

  When Lieutenant Bobby Carron’s eyes opened, he was fully awake but completely disoriented. Nothing familiar, just a big blank spot where he thought he should remember things. No longer in his Bachelor Officer’s Quarters at China Lake, he lay in bed in a strange, dim room. In pain.

  Bobby saw stark featureless walls, smelled antiseptic-clean bedding, felt a cottony mass in his mouth as his tongue ran over his teeth. Bad, flat, rancid-tasting mouth. The window blinds were drawn, and the little sunshine that diffused through looked as if it had been washed and sterilized. Where the hell am I? Somewhere outside the room came a muted chanting, like the throbbing of machinery. He couldn’t figure out what it was.

  His arms ached as he tried to move. He’d been taking a cross-country flight with Barfman Petronfi, on his way to the beach where he could bask in the sun and forget about the Navy. He’d climbed aboard his jet, taken off for Corpus Christi—

  Bobby tried to raise his head. He felt bandages, constraints. And then it came rushing back to him: losing power, electrical systems crapping out, watching Barfman’s plane break apart and drop away into a bright explosion. His own aircraft failing, straining to reach the Albuquerque airport. He had ejected, watching his own A/F 18 plummet into the desert, as the rocky ground rushed up at him like a giant slapping hand….

  He had survived, but how badly was he hurt? His body shivered in waves of pain and numbness. Was he paralyzed? Where was Barfman? Where were the nurses? Why weren’t they watching him? How long had it been?

  He struggled to raise himself on an elbow. They didn’t even have a monitor on him! If this was a real a hospital, then they should have diagnostics, air conditioning, not this damned silence. He grabbed the call button by his bed, but found only bare wires.

  Bobby drew in several deep breaths. In all his years in the Navy, he’d never even been in a hospital except for the “turn your head and cough” routine. He forced himself to relax back on the pillow. Listening, Bobby couldn’t hear a cart creaking down a hallway or even a nurse going to check on a patient; he heard only muted crowd sounds outside the closed window.

  His mind raced through the options. If he was in a hospital, something was definitely wrong. He should hear something.

  Bobby pushed back the sheets. Moving like he was in a room covered with broken glass, he lowered himself to the floor. He discovered several sore muscles and bruises that he hadn’t had before. His right leg was wrapped with a cloth bandage, but he could put weight on it. Both ankles felt swollen. His head throbbed with the fuzziness of pain-killers and sedatives, and a ringing sound echoed in his ears.

  His body struggled to remember how to walk. How many days had he been out? He grunted, trying to keep the pain away.

  Bobby shuffled toward the window, one step at a time across the cold tile floor. A minute later he stood at the window, staring down at the crowd gathered below.

  Outside, thousands of milling people filled a plaza, chanting: “String ‘im up, string ‘im up, string the bastard up!”

  The crowd clustered around a platform like an angry river against an upthrust rock. Timbers had been erected in a crude gallows. Bobby blinked in shock. What the hell?

  Five men dressed in sand-colored camouflage uniforms stepped on stage. A lanky boy, no older then sixteen, staggered up from the ground, fighting against the ropes on his legs. Thrusting arms helped him along.

  The boy was roughly led to the gallows at center stage where a burly man in uniform met him. Some of the people continued to chant, others seemed oddly subdued.

  The uniformed man held his hands above his head, and silence fell like a blanket on the plaza. The boy kept struggling, shouting in terror. The uniformed man gave another signal, and one of the guards stuffed a gag in the prisoner’s mouth.

  Bobby leaned forward to hear the man’s shouted words. He rested his numb fingers on the grille of the window. Had the world gone crazy? Was he hallucinating?

  “—a chain that depends on the strength of one link. And whenever a bad link threatens the good of the whole, it must be removed! I don’t like what circumstances have forced me to do, but now more than any other time in our history as a nation, we must adhere to the law without question. The president has given us explicit instructions. The rules are just. Our future depends on strict obedience.” The man looked grim as he surveyed the crowd. No one cried out, murmurs ran through the periphery.

  One of the men in camouflage threw a long rope over the gallows arm. Another quickly stepped up and secured the noose over the neck of the young boy who whipped his head back and forth in panic; his hands were tied behind his back. The burly officer stepped back as the airman tested the noose.

  “My sworn duty is to protect the people of this city. The odds are stacked against us, but I will not allow looters to make things worse. Any person who refuses to work with us is a threat to everyone.” He jerked a thumb behind him.

  Immediately, three men stepped forward and grasped the rope. On the count of “Ready, ready, now!” they pulled the rope, jerking the young man off his feet.

  The boy dangled in the air, kicking his feet and swaying back and forth as he struggled. His body arched, his elbows spread out to strain against the ropes binding his wrists. His chin jerked from side to side as he twisted his head. Within minutes, his face swelled into a dark, bruised purple. A dark wet stain spread from his crotch.

  Bobby stumbled from the window. He felt his stomach tighten as he tried to vomit on the floor, but he heaved only sour saliva.

  He shook his head to clear it. The entire scene seemed like a morality play in hell. He eased himself back onto the edge of the bed, stunned. With this brutal frontier-style justice, he must be in some Third World banana republic!

  The door of his room swung open, and a grim-faced staff nurse stared at him. She raised her eyebrows. “You’re awake, Lieutenant. You had a terrible concussion, and we didn’t have our usual facilities to treat you. I hope you’re feeling better?”

  “I—don’t know.” Bobby blinked his eyes in shock.

  The nurse glanced at t
he window and strode over to close the blinds. “You’d think the damn kids would know by now that the curfew’s serious. Makes you wonder how many more times they have to set an example before it finally sinks in.” She came over and inspected the wrapping on Bobby’s legs. “It’s good you’re moving around. I need to contact the military liaison.”

  “And he just happens to set up his gallows right outside the hospital?” Bobby couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Why here?”

  The nurse shook her head, scowling toward the window. “No, he’s get several stations all around the city. If the general’s going to make a good example of it, he has to make his punishments visible to a lot of people, and these days communication is very more difficult. Can’t just pick up a newspaper or turn on CNN anymore, you know. Getting word out about the curfew was tough enough.”

  Things were moving too fast. Bobby swallowed, still tasting sour dryness in his throat. “But why is there a curfew at all? And why hang anybody who breaks it?”

  “The general’s enforcing martial law against looters and rioters. No one likes it, but without those drastic measures, the VA hospital would of been taken apart for drugs and equipment. We got guards stationed at every entrance.”

  “But why is there martial law? What’s happened?”

  She smiled and patted his shoulder. “You got a lot to catch up on, don’t you? You’re lucky the general wants to meet you.”

  Part III

  AFTERMATH

  Chapter 52

  The Cabinet Room in the White House was filled for the morning staff meeting in a desperate attempt to pretend at normalcy, but few of those present actually held cabinet rank. It was too difficult to assemble the remaining high-level officials every morning. Instead, the White House staff served as conduits for the rest of the Executive Branch, relaying information to and from President Jeffrey Mayeaux by any means available—wireless, messengers, hand-written instructions. In an effort to ensure continuity, the new Vice President and his staff were being heavily guarded at his residence in the Naval Observatory.