Houston, 2030

by Mike McKay

  “Well, your arguments are quite strong. Who would argue against these? What else can you tell?” It seemed the negotiations had been stalled, and both sides were merely playing against the time. Mark's stalling made a perfect sense. He told Tom and Natalie he would be going here, to the garbage processing plant, and would return to the Station within an hour, maximum an hour and a half. An hour had nearly passed, so he soon would be missed. The Beaumont Highway was not flooded yet, so their response vehicle could be here in another fifteen to twenty minutes. But what the Butcher was stalling for – it was totally unclear.

  The Butcher continued. “All right. From the boys and girls, let's move on to the objects inanimate. On your street, Mark, have you seen the bloody ‘strippers’ lately? This time around, what part of the infrastructure became ‘unnecessary?’ Electric poles, sewage pipes, underground cables? A cell phone tower? A playground? Someone's fence? Someone's deck? Even here, at the 'Fill! Our dear Doctor Stolz and the others. The entire landfill is being pushed through these goddamn reactors! To squeeze out the last bloody gas! I'm telling you: the United States – it's now like one huge meat grinder! And the government is turning, turning, turning the handle. And throwing, throwing, throwing everything and everybody – in! No, not all at once. Small, manageable groups. No more than one hundred people per each handle turn. And slowly, slowly – we all become hamburgers. And the fat cats in Washington, DC will eat us for lunch! But before the government gets to me – I'll eat my portion of the human flesh!”

  Again, there was a careful, determined knock on plastic. Suddenly, Mark understood. The Butcher was not stalling the negotiations. He was making this, perhaps, entirely sincere talk, not to buy time. While talking, he was manufacturing something. Likely, converting the flashlight he picked from the bench, before entering the boiler room. He was trying to do it quietly, but this did not quite work. He was probably missing a knife or a screwdriver, so he had to break the things apart. That was why there was the banging and crackling noise! But what the hell was he doing with the poor flashlight?

  Mark crawled to the right ‘office’ window and lifted his makeshift ‘periscope.’ And here it was. The bombs number two and number three had several wraps of something which looked like a plastic clothes line. Against the darkened metal, with streaks of oil and chemicals, the dark green cord was not particularly noticeable, and this was why Mark did not see it right away. The goddamn Primacord! Exactly like a clothes line, only with explosives inside. What an idiot! So much for sleeping during those counter-terrorism briefings! Then, he saw one more thing. At the bottom of the reactor number three, on the left-hand side, the Primacord ended in a small shiny tube. From the tube, a thin electric wire went towards the boiler enclosure. A detonator.

  Wait a minute! That tin on the table. One switch labeled: ‘ON-OFF.’ The second switch, with big ‘plus’ and ‘minus’ next to it. And a single push button marked: ‘3 SEC.’ Mark finally understood what the tin was. A homemade blasting box! And at that, the one specifically designed for the TriSafe deto! Exactly how Frederick explained during their vodka session: a positive voltage for three seconds, then, a negative voltage for three seconds…

  Bang! The glass of Mark's ‘periscope’ shattered, dousing him with tiny fragments. He rolled to the left window and picked a piece of broken glass from the floor. Now he did not have time to fasten it to the stool leg. With his back against the wall, he carefully stood up next to the window, held the piece of glass near the bottom of the window frame, and looked at the reflection. Bang! This time, the bullet hit a notch below the window, making a formidable hole. If Mark was lying on the floor, the bullet would pass straight through his forehead.

  Now the night watchman had to re-load his shot-gun. Mark quickly jumped to the window opening and assumed the classic FBI Weaver stance: holding his ‘Glock’ with both hands, right elbow slightly bent and pushing forward, the left hand supporting the right hand from below. He suppressed his breath and aligned the gun sights with the detonator. Frederick said, while the deto was not yet ‘activated,’ a bullet should not make it explode. About the Primacord, Mark was not too sure. Likely, from a pistol bullet, it should not explode too. Otherwise, it would make little sense to make safe detonators. The first shot hit about a foot above the deto. The lack of practice was evident, Mark thought. He took his aim again, this time a fraction lower, and gently, as taught by the FBI instructors, pulled the trigger. “The gun shot should come as a surprise for you,” the instructors liked to repeat. The second bullet struck the reactor surface very close to the tube, knocking a fountain of sparks, but the deto was still undisturbed.

  With the corner of his eye, Mark noticed the shotgun barrel being lifted in the brick wall opening. He turned slightly and sent a bullet towards the Butcher. He did not have time to aim it properly, so the shot fell far below the target, sending a spray of mud towards the boiler room. However, the Butcher also did not expect this bullet. He fired at random, and the loud ricochet shrieked on the galvanized ‘office’ roof. Mark jumped away from the window, and just in time: there was a second shotgun report. The heavy bullet hit the wall at the place Mark's head had been a fraction of a second before the shot. Mark took the Weaver stance again and made another aim at the detonator. As the two shots before it, this one was again unsuccessful. To hit a little tube, not any thicker than a ballpoint pen, and less than three inches in length, from the distance of fifteen yards – it was like extinguishing a candle with the pistol shot. Even when Mark was young, and did his firearm practice every week, such a feat was beyond his talents!

  Mark did not have time to aim his next shot. Because he saw something, from which his jaw had dropped, and his ‘Glock’ nearly fell out of his hands. On the scaffolding under the shed roof, above the brick wall of the boiler enclosure, there was Jasmine! Carefully placing her bare feet on rusty pipes and dirty planks, she tried not to make noise. Mark's heart skipped a beat. If the Butcher looked a little up and back, – Jasmine would be a dead meat. To miss from such a short distance was not possible.

  Mark saw the girl had thick chemical gloves on her hands, and that she clutched a huge beaker with yellowish oily liquid in it. The wind blew heavy drops of rain under the shed roof; once in a while, they hit the gloves and the liquid in the beaker. After each drop of water, the yellowish liquid emitted a little plume of heavy steam. A few drops of acid – and this was positively a concentrated acid, had already spilled from the beaker on Jasmine's shirt and chewed ugly black holes in the fabric. Mark saw how Jasmine bit her lower lip to keep herself from crying out in pain.

  The shotgun barrel came up again. Mark jumped away from the window, thus dodging yet another bullet. He ran to the right window, stuck out his hand and fired two shots at random, trying not to lift the gun too much, so his bullets would not come close to Jasmine. I must continue shooting, so the Butcher don't have time to look up, Mark reminded himself. He rolled over to the left window, leaned out slightly and sent his bullet into the brickwork, at the place from which the shotgun barrel protruded a moment ago.

  “Shoot, Daddy, shoot! He's connecting the wires!” Samantha's voice came from the ‘sounduit’ pipe. She probably somehow managed to undo the duct tape from her mouth. “Mister Stolz! And Marty! They are behind the number three! He wants to blow them up!”

  OK, so the Butcher was screwing my brains, Mark realized. Besides Samantha, there were no other hostages in the boiler room. Frederick and Martin were tied up to the reactor number three. With the Primacord! Obviously, Samantha was with them too, until the Butcher untied her in order to negotiate his safe passage to the boiler room. The Butcher's plan became apparent to Mark, with all its horror and beauty. The Butcher carefully planned his exodus, using the hurricane Arthur as a perfect cover-up. The heavy rain and the strong wind were on his side. He would bind the hostages to the reactors with the Primacord. And just before the flooding – would blow everything up! All in small pieces: metal, plastic, biological remains from
several people, and all kinds of nasty chemicals. Then a big fire would start. No wonder, Frederick called his reactors bombs. The rain and the wind would get everything nicely mixed up, and the flood – would wash the rest. It would be difficult, if not totally impossible to establish if the Butcher perished in the explosion or not. Besides, after the hurricane, the Police would be exceptionally busy with all the other cases, and nobody would pay specific attention to this explosion. Yet another gruesome accident in one of the 'Fill garbage processing workshops. Here, such things were too common.

  Even if in the future the Butcher case would be somehow associated with the night watchman from the synthetic gasoline plant, the Butcher himself would be presumed dead. The hurricane Arthur came, and the chemical plant blew up, and the chain of the serial killings stopped. The perpetrator was dead, the case – closed.

  It also became clear, why the Butcher decided not to shoot the hostages before blowing them up. Why would he risk it? Some diligent CSI might find a charred bone, and in it – a bullet hole, with traces of lead from a homemade Minié ball. Implying that the explosion was preceded by a firearm fight. While in the Army, this guy was in those very special forces. The Firebirds. He was a specialist for planting the fake forensic evidence. Must have all the CSI manuals memorized, to the last letter… ‘Forensically aware,’ or ‘forensically trained,’ whatever.

  Then, Mark realized that his sudden arrival to the gasoline plant had spoiled the Butcher the entire game. If only the plant workers were killed in the explosion, it would be easily written off as an accident. But if the same explosion killed the FBI agent, the CSIs might dig a bit deeper. Thus, the Butcher decided to share some of his wonderful coffee with the agent and learn how much exactly the FBI knew. And at that point he would decide, if he should kill Mark at the plant and drag his body out, or if he should let Mark go, follow him, and pop him around the Beaumont Highway area. And his plan might have even worked. Mark was already relaxed, finding no real Eric Spalding at the plant. If somebody did not start banging on the gates…

  “Dad, he got the wires!”

  “Shut up, bitch! Want your brains all over that wall?” the Butcher yelled. Fortunately, no shot followed. The Butcher had one round in the chamber, but his hands were probably occupied with the torch and the wires, Mark guessed. If so, it meant the Butcher had connected the battery, or the motor-generator, whatever he had extracted from the flashlight. And that meant they had a little more than six seconds before the explosion. Two times by three seconds, add a second to flip the polarity twice. Now Mark had nothing to lose. He stood again in the Weaver stance and began aiming at the detonator. Bang! A shot came out totally unexpected to Mark – just as he was taught. The bullet hit very close to the target, without damaging it. He carefully took another aim, holding his breath, and slowly, slowly, pulled the trigger.

  What followed, was etched in Mark's memory as a high-speed video. The detonator, with a small chunk of the Primacord still attached to it, was cut off by the bullet. The damn shiny tube flipped a couple of times in the air and plunked into the mud. A split moment later, it exploded! In loud, but harmless bang, spilling the mud all over the place. Mark suddenly realized he made the impossible. The reactor explosion was averted, at least for now. “A-a-a-ah!” the night watchman shouted.

  Mark took a careful aim to the brick wall opening. Now the detonator was destroyed, and the Butcher became unpredictable. With Samantha in the boiler room and Jasmine on the scaffolding above, Mark's only option was to divert the serial killer's attention towards the ‘office.’ This meant nothing short of a mindless charge. The Charge of the Light Brigade, he remembered suddenly. His own high school History teacher was way better than the idiot Mr. Connely.

  ‘Plunged in the battery-smoke

  Right thro' the line they broke’

  He looked out, preparing his attack. Theirs but to do and die. Then, suddenly, Mark saw that the Butcher stuck his head through the opening looking towards the exploded detonator. He did not see me shooting the deto off, Mark understood. He just thought that either the detonator or the Primacord were faulty. Wondering if somebody sold you a clothes line instead of the real thing? Here comes your bullet, you bustard! Mark shifted the gun sights to the new target and pressed the trigger. Click. Mark focused his eyes at the gun and realized that the gun's slide piece was not fully in the forward position. His old and tired ‘Glock’ finally gave up. She did not eject the cartridge from the previous shot, sticking the new one sideways.

  Surprised and with adrenaline boiling in his blood, Mark started working up the slide, trying to eject the dislodged cartridges. Then, suddenly, there was another loud shotgun report. The Minié ball had finally found its target, hungrily ripping the human flesh as an Amazon piranha. Mark's body jerked to the right. His right arm felt as if it was scalded with boiling water above the elbow level. The useless ‘Glock’ fell from Mark's fingers and flew to the floor. The FBI Agent collapsed back and to the side, on the way down destroying the makeshift coffee table. And at this very moment Mark heard an inhuman scream. It rang in Mark's ears for a long-long while: “Ya-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!”

  Overcoming a sudden weakness, Mark put his left hand over the gaping hole in his right upper arm. ‘I must pick the gun, I must get these cartridges out,’ he repeated to himself. The Butcher was probably reloading right now. As soon as he sticks the new rounds into the chambers, the game would be over. The bustard would kill me immediately, and the rest – a little later. Perhaps, still by the massive explosion. The Primacord was still wrapped around the bombs, and the Butcher somehow did not make impression of a clown who plans a demolition job without having a spare detonator in his pocket.

  Mark tried to stand up, but only managed to get to his knees. Only then did he realize the non-human sounds were still coming from the yard. Now it was not a scream of pain, but more like a breathless shriek: “Eee… Eee… Eee… Eee… Eee…” Mark crawled to the window and looked out. The Sheldon Butcher was rolling in the sticky mud, clutching his face and screaming in agony. Between the blackened fingers, something was dripping from his face: the blood, and something else, probably, the semi-dissolved skin. His eyeballs were coming out too, leaking like squashed eggs. Jasmine was standing at the scaffolding, still with the beaker in her gloved hands, but now the glass was empty.

  Jasmine saw Mark's face in the ‘office’ window, threw the empty beaker to the blinded Butcher, and rushed to the scaffolding stairs, tearing off the rubber gloves. “Mister Mark, dear, please, don't die, I'm coming, I'm – right away…” Then, she heard something from the boiler room, stopped suddenly in the middle of the yard, and ran back into the brick partition opening. Mark remembered no further. Suddenly, all strength had deserted him, and he lost consciousness.

  Chapter 26

  Mark opened his eyes and discovered he was in a hospital bed. Sun was shining in through a broken window with no trace of glass. The lower part of the window opening was patched with recycled carton and duct tape. The walls, used to be off-white, now displayed a zebra-like pattern of yellowish and blackish stains from many years of use. There was a distinct hum of human activity, same as one can expect in a busy hospital: someone explaining something medical in hushed tones, dropping Latin words here and there, someone moaning from pain, someone chatting… He tried to move his head and discovered that his neck was in a spinal collar, while his right arm was in a plaster and protruded at an odd angle from under the bed sheet.

  He felt practically no pain (OK, maybe, a little in the right shoulder,) and was in absolutely peaceful and optimistic mood. The sun was so wonderfully bright, and the sky – so outstandingly blue. The amazingly fresh air was coming through so marvelously broken window into a room with these funny yellow and black stains on the wall. The hospital bed mattress was exceptionally soft and comfy. Mark was literally floating in the air! Even the hospital disinfection smell was reasonably pleasing. However, there was something on the back of his mind that could not k
eep Mark fully in-peace. Something about Frederick Stolz and his gasoline plant. Oh, yeah, it was raining like hell, and Mark was shooting into some shiny metal stick at the end of the clothes line… Unpleasant… Forget it, buddy, something in the head suggested. Relax. Enjoy the air-soft bed and the shiny sky. But the other part of the brain started fighting, pushing up to the surface the rain and the wind, and the Weaver stance, and the shotgun with the Minié balls, and the leaking eyes between the blackened fingers… Suddenly, Mark remembered the entire thing. Oh, shite! Samantha, Jasmine, Frederick, and Martin: were they OK? He made a sudden move, trying to separate himself from the bed. He was pretty sure that with the little effort he could fly above it – out the broken window and into the blue sky. How would I navigate, he asked himself. Never mind, we would figure it out, something said in his head.