Authors: Kyle Mills
Erin stared through the door at the smashed bottles and then flipped a chair back on its feet. As he sat down, he could feel the adrenaline run out. "What were they doing here?"
"How should I know?" she said defensively.
He was about to remind her that she had started all this, but he'd already done that too many times.
"It's a lot of gear, Jen. And this place isn't exactly Teague's style. I seem to remember him preferring artificial waterfalls and Swedish models."
She looked around the building again, chewing her lower lip. "Maybe they haven't hit all the water-injected wells yet. Maybe this is where they were breeding the bacteria to finish the job."
"I don't know, Jen. I really don't."
She started to move toward him, but then stopped just close enough to be awkward. "So maybe this helped. Maybe we stopped him from doing any more. And now he's on the run."
Erin didn't answer. She closed the remaining distance, kneeling and resting her hands on his knees. "It's so good to see you again." She managed a laugh, but it seemed in danger of turning to a sob. "With everything that's going on, that sounded really stupid didn't it? But I never thought I'd ever be close to you again."
He wanted to reach out and wrap his arms around her. To kiss her. To make all this go away. But that was even stupider.
An unfamiliar ring tone filled the room and Jenna crawled over to a broken monitor, finding the source of the sound beneath it
"Christ," she said, looking down at the cell phone's tiny screen.
"What?"
She put the phone hesitantly to her ear. "Hello, Michael."
Erin knelt next to her and she held the phone out so he could hear.
"It looks like I missed you again, Jenna.
I'm sorry for that. I would like to have had a chance to talk."
"About what, Michael? About what you were doing here? About Saudi Arabia?" "That. And other things."
"Why, Michael? Don't you understand
"Because someone had to before it was too late. You know that as well as I do, Jenna, you just don't have the courage to face it. Hundreds of years ago, when people destroyed their environment, they died or migrated and the earth was able to heal. But now we've changed all that."
"Are you insane, Michael? How will this save anything? You'll starve the most vulnerable people in the world and cause the wealthier countries to switch to even dirtier kinds of energy to keep things going."
"Perhaps. Is Erin there?"
She hesitated for a moment. "Yes."
"Ask him if he's been following the news."
"Fuck you," Erin shouted, grabbing the phone. "Why don't you come back here and we can --"
"Stop!" Jenna said, snatching the phone back and looking down at it. "He hung up." "Son of a bitch!"
Erin stood and paced back and forth across the room, randomly kicking at the debris. There was no denying it. Teague had won. He'd disappear and live the good life while they were hunted down and blamed for the disaster that he'd caused -- the final nail in a coffin Teague had been building for him since Energy and Nature had been published.
"Calm down, Erin. Don't let him get to you like that. He's doing it on purpose."
Of course she was right, but it was hard not to get lost in fantasies of squeezing Teague's pale little neck until his head popped.
"There's no more time," she said. "We've got to make a decision. You know what I think, but it's your call. I got you into this and I'll do whatever you want."
Erin slowed, finally stopping behind one of the few tables in the room that hadn't been overturned. Running was still the smart move, but was it futile? His picture was probably plastered across every television screen on the planet.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm scared, Jenna. I hate to admit it, but I am. What'll happen to us if we turn ourselves in or we get caught? There won't be any lawyers. Or rights. Terrorists don't get those things. Terrorists just disappear."
"So you're saying we should run?"
He shook his head. "A few hours ago, I would have said yes. But now . . ."
"What?"
"This lab is set up for research, Jen. Not production. And Teague's a nut, not an idiot. He's not finished. He's still got something up his sleeve, and this place was the key to it."
"Then let's call the government."
"If we call the government, we either have to do it from the road or turn ourselves in. Either way -- we're out of the picture. Think about it, Jen. If the government was smart, who would they call to figure out what was going on here?"
He could see that she knew what he was driving at but was reluctant to respond.
"Go ahead, Jen. You know I'm right. Say it."
"Fine. If they could have anybody, they'd call us."
Chapter
25.
Michael Teague turned in his seat to watch Jonas slip in through the van's rear door and kneel amongst the equipment they'd managed to salvage during their hasty abandonment of the research facility. The most important piece -- a large stainless steel thermos full of their newly modified bacteria -- was wedged between the front seats. The product of so much money, so much sacrifice, he wanted to keep it within reach.
Jonas squinted into a dusty window and examined the dark, swollen cut on his forehead in the reflection.
"Why are you with us?" Teague asked. "Not for your expertise in genetic engineering. Not because you have the money to finance any of this or the vision to keep it going. You're here because Udo told me you could handle situations like this -- that you could deal with two unarmed PhDs, one of whom is a goddamn woman."
"Michael, be calm," Udo pleaded as his brother continued to examine his wound. "We've perfected the bacteria and cleaned out the warehouse. We had no use for it anymore."
"That warehouse isn't clean," Teague said as Udo slowed the van to stay at exactly the speed limit. "It would have taken days to sterilize it."
"You should have burned it," Jonas said from the back.
"You seem bent on attracting attention to us," Teague shot back. "If it --"
"It doesn't matter!" Udo shouted. "Erin is a wanted man and Jenna can't afford to expose herself. They'll likely run. And if they don't -- if they do try to understand what we were doing there and they succeed -- what will that produce? Nothing. It's too late."
"They won't run," Teague said. "And eventually they'll tell the government who we are."
"Jenna should never have left that boat alive," Jonas said. "There was no reason for it. No reason to risk this happening."
Teague spun in his seat and glared at him for a moment, but there was no real point to it. For the time being at least, Jonas was necessary. They had thousands of miles to drive, fuel availability was disintegrating, and the public's reaction was becoming increasingly hysterical. Carjackings and the siphoning of gas tanks -- sometimes forcibly -- were becoming commonplace. Without someone of Jonas's temperament to deflect problems, their van and its huge auxiliary fuel tank would be a tempting prize.
"If we take shifts driving, how long to get there?" Teague asked.
No response.
"Udo?"
The German redoubled his concentration on the nearly empty road, refusing to look at him. "We weren't expecting to have to leave on such short notice, Michael."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"The van's tank isn't entirely full. I'd planned to have Jonas begin the process of filling it when he returned. There was still plenty of time . . ."
Teague blinked, his mind taking a moment to process what he was hearing. "Are you saying we're going to have to stop to get gas?"
"Right now, we have enough for about seven hundred miles, but --"
"Do you have any idea how long that could delay us?" Teague shouted. "The gas-rationing program is going into effect in a few days. We could be on the road for weeks -- completely exposed."
"I don't believe it will be that long. We can use --"
"You don't believe? I don't give a shit what you believe!"
"There's no point in insulting me or Jonas, Michael. The situation is as it is."
Teague slammed his hand into the dash and turned away, staring out the window and trying to calm down enough to think.
In the face of the massive technological barriers to their plan's success and the logistical complexity of delivering the first version of their bacteria, he'd been forced to leave many of the mundane details to Jonas and Udo. As the situation continued to disintegrate and the American people became more desperate, though, it was increasingly clear that there were no mundane details. Every error was potentially fatal.
No. Udo was right. It didn't matter. The bacteria were finally a success and they'd been preparing to leave Texas for their breeding facility anyway. Getting to Canada would be difficult without a full complement of fuel, but not as difficult as everything he had accomplished so far. They would get there. And he would finish what he had started.
Chapter
26.
The Kroger lot was mostly empty, but Jenna still parked well away from the entrance. For some reason it felt safer.
"I'm going to run in and get some supplies. Do you want to come with me?"
Erin shook his head. "The post office is just around the corner. I'll go get in line. Come pick me up when you're finished. The sooner we get out of town, the better."
He reached for the door handle, but she grabbed his arm, trying to think of something to say -
-
something that would make him understand everything that had happened to her since she had left. Instead, she found herself leaning in to kiss him.
He turned away but didn't get out.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Don't know what
"Forget it," he said, and shoved the door open with his shoulder. She watched him cross the parking lot and then the nearly empty street, finally closing her eyes when he disappeared around the corner.
"Stupid!" she said aloud, pounding the back of her head into the seat. What was she thinking? That with everything she'd put him through -- and was still putting him through -- he'd just jump back into bed with her? She wasn't thinking. That was the problem. Everything was spinning out of control, but instead of doing something about it, she was just sitting there getting dizzier and dizzier.
Jenna got out of the car and slammed the door, feeling the heat of the sun burn through her shirt as she stalked toward the store. The smart move was to just keep walking -- he was better off without her. In an hour, it could all be over. She could be sitting in the nearest FBI office, signing an affidavit saying he wasn't involved.
But what good would that really do? Erin was right -- the government wasn't going to take her word for it, particularly now that every detail of his life was being examined with microscopic intensity on every news show in the world. They'd throw him in the same dungeon she ended up in and send a bunch of mediocre scientists picked for their political reliability to figure things out. The bottom line was that, at least for now, Erin was stuck with her.
She passed through the automatic doors, but didn't feel the sudden chill she'd come to expect. The price of electricity had jumped, too, as the oil-intensive process of mining and transporting coal sky-rocketed. Cooling commercial buildings to arctic temperatures was obviously too expensive now.
But that was the least of it. She wandered around the store looking at partially empty shelves and the hastily changed prices. Private industry was adapting with typically cold-hearted efficiency. The grocery business was quickly abandoning its inefficient centralized distribution system and bringing in local seasonal products to minimize transportation costs. Fruits and vegetables from overseas were either nonexistent or exorbitantly priced. Even the cost of bananas from Florida had more than doubled. On the other hand, Texas beef was plentiful and cheap, as were the locally grown sweet potatoes and apples that were overflowing into empty bins that had once held imports.
According to yesterday's New York Times, Maine was glutted with lobster and it was selling for less than half the cost of hamburger. Who would have thought there would be a day when people couldn't afford
a Big Mac and would have to settle with lobster Newburg?
"Thanks, dude," Erin said as a heavyset postal employee helped him heft the last box onto the ones already stacked on the dolly.
"That's all of them," the man said, wiping the sweat from his forehead and stepping back so that Erin could wheel the precarious stack of microscopes, incubators, and other research equipment through the door.
So far, so good. The baseball hat and glasses seemed to be enough to keep people from equating him with the photos they saw on television, and now all he had to do was figure out how to get these boxes into the back of Jonas's Toyota. He should have asked Jenna to get some rope to tie a few things to the top, but he was still having a hard time thinking clearly when she was around -- partially because of the effort it was taking to hold onto his anger and partially because of the fear of what might replace it if he lost his grip.