by Bill Myers
Coleman reached out and grabbed Katherine’s arm. He pulled her to him hard. “She’s my hostage.”
“But —”
“Get out of here before I decide to take more!”
He scurried off, rushing the guard ahead of him.
“Hostage?” Katherine said, angrily ripping her arm free of his grasp.
But with lightning speed he grabbed it again, this time twisting it behind her back. She started to fight, but he yanked it up so hard she cried out. He hissed into her ear, “You want to share the blame for this?”
Again she struggled, and he pulled so hard tears came to her eyes.
“This way they’ll only come after me.”
“Hey, man, come on —”
Katherine looked up to see a freckle-faced kid protesting.
“Can’t you see you’re hurting her?”
Katherine heard a pistol cocking and turned to see Coleman leveling it directly at the kid. Suddenly she feared that Coleman was no longer acting.
“All right, all right,” the kid said as he backed away. “Just take it easy, take it easy.”
In a little over a minute, the hallway was clear, and Coleman released Katherine with a shove. She grabbed her arm and rubbed it, wanting to shout at him, to curse him. But when she saw the hate that had returned to his eyes, she forced herself to remain silent. Now that there was just the two of them, she had no idea what he would do.
“You go too,” he ordered, wiping the sweat out of his eyes. “Your kid’s not here. Get out while you can.”
She searched his face for signs of the Coleman she’d once known, once admired. “What about you?” she countered. “You have no stake in this. Why not look out for yourself and get out of here, too?”
He hesitated, and for a split second she saw it. He was still there. Somewhere inside, the Coleman she knew was still there, still struggling, still trying to do right, regardless of the cost.
Holding his gaze, she shook her head. “No, this is too important to let you screw it up on your own. I’m staying as long as you do.”
Murkoski stepped back outside the cabin just in time to see his Mercedes disappear down the drive. The older man had climbed into the other car, the Audi, to go after it.
“No!” Murkoski shouted. “Take the van!”
The man rolled down his window. “What?”
“I’m driving this one to the lab.”
“Why can’t you take the —”
“The van’s got a plastic tarp in the back. That way you won’t get blood on the carpet. And take a couple shovels so you can put the body somewhere it won’t be found.” The order had been given, and Murkoski held the man’s gaze to make sure there was no misunderstanding.
Coleman and Katherine scoured the labs, emptying every refrigerator of every Eppendorf tube, checking all the centrifuges, the incubators, the sequencers, everything O’Brien had said could contain samples of the GOD gene. They had to be certain. Every sample on the third floor had to be torched.
Katherine wasn’t sure why Coleman had chosen to dump all of the tubes into the open elevator. It was getting to be quite a pile, nearly five feet high, and they still had two more labs to go. She wanted to question him on it, but she knew that it was time to keep the arguments to a minimum. He was unstable, a primed bomb ready to explode, and there was no telling what would set it off.
No, she wouldn’t question his methods. If there were to be any confrontations, she’d save them for the most critical issues.
She dumped another wastebasket full of tubes into the elevator.
“Hey…”
She turned. He stood at the entrance to the last lab, worn and drawn and soaked with perspiration. As threatening and unnerving as it was for her to work with him, she couldn’t even imagine what it must be like for him — what type of pain the viral leash was inflicting upon his body, and more importantly, what type of monster he was battling within his mind.
“There’s something …” He swallowed. “I think you should see this.”
She followed him into the laboratory.
It sat on a lab bench across the room. He had just removed it from a freezer. It was a clear, round container, looking very much like a high-tech, Plexiglas humidor. It stood twelve inches high with a base five inches in diameter.
Inside was what looked like a translucent rock. Yellow-brown. But as she moved closer, Katherine realized that it wasn’t a rock at all.
It was wax. A small piece of ancient, yellowed wax.
She stooped for a closer look. One end of the wax had been sheered off. And from that end protruded a tiny twig. But she knew it was no twig. She stopped breathing. It was not a twig, but the remains of a vine. And although it was hard to make out through the opaqueness of the wax, there appeared to be the remnant of one, maybe two, long, spindly thorns.
She stared in silent, reverent awe. Of course, she could see no blood through the wax, but she knew it was there. Traces of blood two thousand years old.
As she stared, she couldn’t help thinking how those traces of blood on this frail vine were responsible for the unimaginable terror about to be released upon humankind.
No, that wasn’t true. The blood wasn’t the cause. The blood was holy, pure, good. It wasn’t the blood, it was how man had twisted and contorted this goodness, how he had once again found a way to turn holiness into horror.
Coleman cleared his throat. “Better, uh — throw it into the elevator with the rest,” he said.
Katherine nodded. But neither moved to touch it. Not yet. They would, of course. But for now they wanted to look upon it just a moment longer. And to quietly wonder.
As soon as Eric’s car slid out of the gravel driveway and onto the main road, he knew he’d turned the wrong direction. He was going up the mountain; he wanted to be going down.
Then there was the problem of the accelerator. No matter how hard he pressed, the engine only whined louder — the car never moved faster.
Fortunately, his slower progress made it easier to stay on the road — at least what road he could see. It would have helped if he could have found the switch for the lights, but Eric didn’t dare take his hands off the wheel to start exploring.
A pair of high beams bounced onto the road behind him. They quickly closed in, blazing through the back window and into the car. Their approach terrified Eric, and it was all he could do to hold the car on the road. Now the vehicle behind him began honking, long and loud, over and over again.
Eric’s anxiety skyrocketed and his driving grew worse, until he was swerving back and forth across the road.
The lights backed off.
It took forever to bring his car back under control. When he did, Eric noticed how hot and damp his hands had become. He wiped them off on his jeans, one at a time.
Once again the headlights approached, flashing from high beams to low and back again, the car horn blaring.
“Stop it!” Eric cried. “Stop it!”
The vehicle pulled directly behind him, so close that he could see it was the van that had been in the driveway, and he could see the faces of both kidnappers.
“Stop it!” Eric screamed.
They eased to his left. Their lights no longer flooded the inside of his car; now they illuminated the road beside him. He knew that they were pulling up. He looked over to see, but lost his bearings and began swerving again.
Once again the lights dropped back.
It was then that Eric noticed a red warning light glowing on the instrument panel. He figured that whatever he was doing wrong, whatever was making the car’s engine race without moving, was making the light burn.
He checked the speedometer. Thirty miles an hour. He pressed down on the accelerator as hard as he could. The engine whined louder.
Suddenly the car lurched forward with a loud CRASH.
Eric screamed.
Another crash, another lurch.
The bad guys were ramming him. He had to do something. He loo
ked down at the gearshift. It was on “1.” When he had pushed on it the first time, it got him going; maybe it was worth another try. He shoved it into another position. Something labeled “N.”
What power he had suddenly vanished, and the engine roared wildly, as if it were going to explode.
They rammed him again.
Eric screamed.
Then again.
But this time they didn’t back off. Instead, they kept their bumper pressed hard against his. Suddenly he had more power than he knew what to do with. They were pushing him. They picked up speed. Thirty miles an hour, thirty-five, forty…
“Knock it off!” Eric shouted, as he fiercely gripped the steering wheel. “Stop it! Stop it!”
But they didn’t stop.
Forty-five.
Eric was losing control. He began to swerve.
To his right rose a steep cliff. To his left, the ground fell away in an equally steep drop-off. He played it safe and oversteered to the right. The car scraped, then banged against the cliff, glancing off the protruding boulders. It was a bone-jarring ride. He cringed at the smashing and screeching of sheet metal against granite. He knew that he was making plenty of scratches and dents and figured it would probably get him into lots of trouble. But he also figured that being grounded for life was better than not having a life.
And still the van continued to push.
The road swerved to the right. The rocks and boulders he’d been banging against disappeared, and Eric found himself shooting across the road into the left lane.
“Stop it!” he cried. “Stop it!”
He cranked the wheel to the right, but he was too late. The car crashed through the guardrail and suddenly became airborne.
Eric screamed, taking his hands off the wheel to cover his face. The car glanced off a large tree, then everything went topsy-turvy, like a carnival ride gone berserk. He flew into the roof, then into the doors, then the roof again. It was happening too fast to feel any pain. He figured the pain would come later.
The windshield exploded, spraying glass over his face, his arms, his hands. And then he felt nothing.
When Murkoski arrived at Genodyne, he slowed the car and eased past the dozen or so employees milling outside the security gate in the fog. When he turned and tried to enter the gate, a man with a Greater City of Arlington Police Department uniform stepped from the security building and waved him to a stop.
Murkoski rolled down his window. “It’s okay, officer, I’m Dr. Murkoski, head of the —”
“I’m sorry, Sir, no one is allowed inside the parking lot.”
“You don’t understand. I’m in charge of —”
“I’m sorry, Sir. No one is allowed within a three-hundred-yard perimeter of the building.”
“A three-hundred-yard perimeter?”
“Those are my orders, Sir. Now if you’ll please back up and —”
“But —”
“I’m sorry, Sir.”
Murkoski hated the man’s politeness. Underneath all of that courtesy was just some hick who loved to flaunt his authority. Without a word, he threw the car into reverse, spitting just enough dirt and gravel to show his contempt.
He found a level place on the opposite side of the road and parked just as a local TV cable van approached. “Great,” he sighed, “a media event.” Then he shrugged. It wouldn’t be that bad. After all, he was getting quite good at spinning stories and manipulating truth.
He threw open the door, nodded to some of the huddled staff, and strode through the fog toward the gate. The first cop, apparently expecting a confrontation, had already signaled his partner, who was a few years his senior.
Murkoski wasn’t concerned. There were only two of them, and from his lofty perspective they were nothing but hayseeds.
“Mr. Murkoski?” the older cop asked.
“Dr. Murkoski, that’s right.”
“I’m Officer Sealy of the Arlington —”
“Did you find them?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Apparently we have a bomb threat here.”
“A bomb threat? Why do you say that?”
“Several of your employees were threatened by a man with a gasoline can and other paraphernalia. He claimed to have set a bomb.”
“A gasoline can?” There was no hiding the condescending tone in Murkoski’s voice. “You don’t make a bomb with a can of gasoline.”
“It could be a hoax, that’s true. His first deadline has already come and gone, but we have to be certain. Fortunately, except for a hostage, everyone else has been cleared from the building.”
“A hostage?”
“Yes, a woman.”
Murkoski’s mind raced. He knew it was Coleman up there. And with him, the boy’s mother. But what were they up to? From the e-mail he’d seen on the computer screen, it sounded as if they’d been looking for the boy. But if they’d cleared the building, then they already knew he wasn’t there. So why were they still in there? Unless…
Sensing a significant danger, Murkoski’s thoughts snapped into sharper focus. The e-mail message had also said something about the kid reading computer files. If the kid could open Murkoski’s files and navigate the Internet, then he could also transmit those files. And if he had transmitted the wrong file to Coleman and the woman, and if they had read it…
Murkoski turned to the cop. “You said he had other paraphernalia?”
“Yes, a gasoline can and a gym bag full of unspecified items. Now we’re no experts in this field, but…”
The officer continued rattling, but Murkoski didn’t listen. Why would Coleman take a can of gasoline into the plant? That’s not enough to make a bomb. Enough to start a fire, certainly, but…
Destroy all the samples? No, there was far too much material for him to try and destroy on his own. Besides, the new Coleman he’d invented wouldn’t be that brazen. Then again, if the old Coleman had returned, the one who’d run death row, there was no telling what he was capable of.
“…a bit out of our league,” the officer was saying. “So we’ll just sit tight and wait for the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Bomb Division to come up from Everett.”
“Officer?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I know who the man is.”
“You do? Are you certain?”
“He is one of my volunteers, a patient.”
“Well, then, maybe you could talk to him. If we can establish
communication —”
The cable crew had arrived, and a light suddenly blasted into their eyes, momentarily distracting the officer.
“Maybe you could talk to him by phone, I mean, if we set it up.”
“It would be better if I talked to him in person.” Murkoski flipped the hair out of his eyes and spoke just a little louder for the camera.
The officer looked surprised. “Dr. Murkoski, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“He won’t hurt me. He trusts me.”
The officer fidgeted. This was obviously not a decision he felt qualified to make, and making it under the glaring light of the camera was even worse.
“Trust me on this, Officer…Officer…?”
“Sealy.”
“Officer Sealy of the Arlington Police Department?”
“Yes.”
“Officer Sealy, if you go in there, you’ll frighten him, and he may indeed kill his hostage and blow up the entire facility. I’m sure you don’t want that.”
“Well, no, of course not.”
“And if we wait, he may kill her and blow it up anyway. You did say one deadline has already passed.”
“That’s true, but —”
“If you allow me in there, if you let me reason with him, I’m sure he’ll listen.”
“But, risking your own life —”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take, officer.” Murkoski knew he sounded a bit melodramatic, but, after all, this was TV. “For his life, for the hostage’s life, for the sake of t
he company, I’ll take that risk.”
The officer frowned, still undecided. Murkoski knew that he needed a last push. He patted the man’s arm and smiled in gratitude as if he had just received permission. Then, without a word, he turned and started across the parking lot for the building.
“Dr. Murkoski. Dr. Murkoski?”
Murkoski pretended not to hear. He was sure the camera was still rolling, and that was good. The cop was out of his league. No way would the hick want to make a public scene now — especially with somebody of Murkoski’s position.
Murkoski smiled quietly. Once he got through all of this, he would have to call up the station and ask for a copy of the tape. He always enjoyed seeing himself on TV.
O’Brien sat in the Pizza Hut snack shop at Sea-Tac. He stared out at his Mexicana Flight #142 to Mazatlán. As they had for the past several hours, a half-dozen ground crew members meandered around the 757, trying to look busy.
O’Brien sighed heavily and tore open another pack of Equal. If someone would just take the initiative and cancel the flight, he could go home or grab a hotel room for the night. Instead, every half hour or so, they would announce that the problem was nearly corrected and that they should be boarding shortly.
O’Brien slowly poured a stream of tiny Equal granules into his third cup of decaf. The late news droned on an overhead monitor, but he took little notice — until he heard the name Genodyne. Suddenly his ears perked up:
“…a bomb threat by a man with a hostage. We have a crew en route to this late-breaking story, and we hope to have a full report before the end of the broadcast.”
O’Brien stared at the screen in disbelief. He felt numb and guilty and nauseous all at the same time. Coleman had been found out. The plan had failed before it had even begun.
Eric awoke to the sound of voices — thick and blurry and far, far away. His head ached and he wanted to keep his eyes shut, but there was a light flickering against his lids and he knew he should see what it was.
The voices grew clearer.
He pried open his eyes, but his glasses were gone. Without them it was hard to make out the details, but he definitely saw the flames. He sat up. The pounding in his head grew worse. Fifty yards below him, at the bottom of the hill, a car was on fire. There were no explosions, just roaring, lapping flames.
