Havoc by Shannon McKenna
26
The crew with the tractor worked quickly, clearing rubble from the area where Mace’s wormhole had been. At one point, she heard shouts of triumph. They had found an opening to the lower level, where the signal was still transmitting.
The tractor ground a short distance away, and stopped.
One of the men was letting himself down into a gaping hole. She heard his muffled voice from below, calling up to tell what he saw down there.
Too fast. She’d hoped that it would take them hours. Once they were done, so was she. The only reason she was still alive was because they were all too busy to be bothered torturing or killing her right now. The GodsAcre cavern was already like a grave, full of deep, dark, secret holes. A perfect place to leave her broken body.
Don’t think about that. You’re still alive. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
She almost smiled at the thought. Like something Dad would have said.
All too quickly, Kimball came back, eyes lit up with glee. He was holding a large, dusty black metal case, like a reinforced hard shell suitcase.
“I brought it over so you could witness this,” he said. “It seems appropriate, since this is also your father’s work. He really was a genius. Too bad, how it ended for him.”
“Fuck you,” Cait said. “Don’t speak my father’s name.”
“You’re in no position to be mouthy,” Kimball chided her “But look at this.” Kimball wiped away the thick layer of dust and grime from the case, revealing something stenciled on it in bold, blocky letters. BOTHELL STRONGBOX.
He punched in a number, and opened the box. “Take a look. Go on. Look.”
She leaned forward, curious in spite of herself. It was just molded foam, with ten clear glass vials held in a row, each one labeled. MLB-2C-18.
“Since you’re also a virologist, you’ll also appreciate my modular transportable clean room. Tom helped me design it, but your dirty Trask fuckboy destroyed the cave before I could install it in my lab here.” He swept his hand proudly at the truck trailer. “Finally, Tom’s clean room can fulfill its purpose.” He closed up the case, and hauled it over to the open door, placing it inside.
“Why bother with a clean room?” she asked. “I thought that releasing the virus into the world was the whole point.”
“Yes, but at the perfect place and time,” he said. “I want to make sure it doesn’t lose momentum or peter out. I have it all planned. There are ten vials. I’ve procured ten janitor’s lanyards and uniforms for ten different airports. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas Fort Worth, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, JFK New York, and Newark, New Jersey. Take a look. What would you say these are, off the top of your head?”
Kimball opened a small case from a pile next to the truck, and pulled out a spray can. It had a picture of a pine forest stamped on it, and “Forest Fresh” in big green letters. Cait stared at it, baffled.
“It looks like an air freshener. Or a disinfectant,” she said.
“Exactly,” Kimball said. “I’ve even concocted a relaxing aroma to mix with it. Full of essential oils of pine, rosemary and lavender, no irritating synthetic perfumes. I’ll put one vial into each of these cans, and send my crew with their cleaning carts out into the airports. They’ll wheel around, spraying their scented air freshener wherever the crowd is thickest, and I won’t even have to worry about getting the virus through security, because the travelers will carry it for me in their lungs. To all the four corners of the world.”
“You filthy son-of-a-bitch,” Cait said.
“Crafty son-of-a-bitch,” Kimball corrected sternly. “I want to speed up the spread. I’m sick of waiting. I want to start using my death rod somewhere other than this shitty little town. I crave a bigger playing field. And all of this was made possible by your father’s research. And you, of course. You put this within my reach, Cait. Thank you.”
“Don’t you dare thank me. Don’t pretend that we’re in any way complicit in your selfish plans,” Cait said. “My father was a great scientist, and an honorable man. He must have been horrified when he realized what you were.”
“It was fortunate that I got what I needed from him before he caught on,” Kimball mused. “Poor Tom. So smart, but not an ounce of cunning in him. Darius, Julian, lift her up. I want you to admire the clean room, Cait, since you’re the only one here who can understand the elegance of its design. Or, I should say, your father’s design.”
“My dad?” Julian and Darius dragged her forward through rough stones, bruising her bare feet. “My dad made that?”
“Of course, at the time, he thought it was a modular clean room designed to be used by charitable NGOs in the developing world, to fight against emerging viruses.” Kimball chuckled. “Poor altruistic Tom. Anyhow, behold your father’s brilliance. It’s the perfect size for me. Air scrubbers, temperature and pressure and humidity control, interlock doors, unidirectional air flows, entirely self-contained, and can powered by solar panels, wind, or other fuels, depending on what’s available. It’s truly a thing of beauty.”
“It sounds like you want me to be impressed by your ingenuity,” Cait said. “But you’re just a malignant parasite. A contemptible piece of shit. Fuck you, Kimball.”
Kimball’s self-satisfied smile faded. “Hit her,” he said, to the men holding her.
* * *
Mace smelledthe next guy before he saw him, because the dickhead was smoking. He could hear Jeremiah’s snort of derision in his mind.
Mace drifted closer. Saw the bright red dot of the guy’s smoke glowing in the dimness. He was watching the entrance. He had no clue about the tunnel to the falls.
Of course not. Because Cait had never betrayed them. Cait was innocent, brave, and true-hearted, and she did not deserve this.
Don’t think about that now. Stay sharp.
Mace whipped the long, heavy chunk of rebar down onto the guy’s head. The cigarette flew. The crunch of the guy’s skull told him he didn’t have to worry about making sure this bozo stayed down, so he left him where he lay, the stream of smoke still swirling up from the cigarette lying on the ground.
He moved closer to the roar of heavy machinery. A guy was operating the backhoe again, maneuvering it away from the library chamber and back to the big front chamber, away from where Cait’s tracer had identified the transponder. So they’d figured out where the virus was, extracted it, and were moving the tractor to more stable ground.
The tractor shovel was still hoisted high, and loaded with concrete chunks. The guy clambered out of the vehicle. Mace leaped up as the guy’s mouth opened—
The shout never made it out of his throat. Mace smashed the gun butt to the side of his head, sending him pin-wheeling back. Mace leaped and hit him between the eyes. No noise. He let out a choked grunt. Mace heard a voice on the other side of the tractor.
“Bingham! The boss says to bring it back to the truck!”
Mace snatched up a big loose chunk of brick, and leaped into the tractor. He’d learned to operate one when he was a kid. The guy who had called for Bingham looked up and saw Mace, eyes widening right before Mace maneuvered the backhoe’s scoop sideways at top speed, slamming it into his head.
The guy toppled. He did not move again.
Mace steered the tractor in the direction of the hole in the floor. Another guy walked toward him, waving and yelling something, which Mace of course couldn’t hear.
He set the throttle to the highest speed, released the brake, and surged forward fast, the machine dangerously top-heavy with the loaded shovel hoisted up to the max.
On the guy’s face, Mace saw the moment when he made several realizations. Who drove the tractor, how fast it was coming at him, and that the bucket was over his head.
He started yelling, just as Mace dumped the load. The guy disappeared. Just a single dusty boot protruding from the heap of rubble.
The tractor lurched over the rocks and the body, almost tipping. Mace aimed it at the gaping hole in the floor, wedged the brick onto the accelerator, and bailed out.
His plan was rough, improvised. Given time, he could have come up with something better, but hey. The tractor chugged on, right toward the hole in the floor.
The others began to notice. Angry voices got louder, as the tractor swayed, toppled…and then fell over sideways, into the hole.
“…the fuck is going on?” someone screamed. “Bingham? Wilkes? What the fuck are you doing? Who crashed the fucking tractor?”
Two men ran hell for leather toward the tractor, and Mace kept low and left them to it. He’d deal with those guys later. For now, he just wanted to get closer to that splash of crimson in the floodlights near that big truck.
Let her be alive. Please.
Look at him, praying, for fuck’s sake. He’d never prayed in his adult life, not after having formally rejected all the hard-core fanatic religious crap that had been shoved down his throat in his youth, all of which ended in fire, blood and death.
Please. Enough. Let this turn out differently.