Authors: Kyle Mills
And he wasn't the only one. The New York Times had broken a story about other environmentalists -- many of whom she knew -- who had been picked up by Homeland Security and were still missing. Other than the families, though, no one seemed to care. The American people were suffering more and more each day and weren't of a mind to block paths that might alleviate that suffering.
Resentment toward the Europeans and Asians, who were faring better because they consumed less energy than Americans, was growing but continued to be overshadowed by animosity aimed at Canada. The media was mostly at fault -- missing no opportunity to juxtapose images of Toronto and Montreal's car-choked streets with the sparsely populated streets of America's cities, as well as creating increasingly elaborate graphs to depict the skyrocketing profits being generated from Canadian oil.
The stock market continued to tumble and unemployment continued to rise as it became clear that the U. S. economy had been operating at the very edge of collapse for years -- desperately reliant on cheap energy and ever-increasing debt to stay one step ahead of disaster. The bread lines of the depression that had seemed so distant months ago were becoming a very real possibility.
Because of her.
She went back inside and sat down behind a microscope purchased at a children's hobby store, wondering again what she should do.
The guilt she felt about not turning herself in had been bad enough without having to wonder what had happened to Erin and the other environmentalists, but now it was becoming unbearable. Why hadn't the cops been there when she'd jumped through that door? The obvious answer was that Erin hadn't told them where she was. But why? Did he think the government would just throw them both in a hole somewhere and not believe a word they said? Was he doing it out of some kind of wildly misguided loyalty? Or worse, out of love? That would be the most awful thing she'd ever heard. For everything she'd done to him -- everything she'd done to the world -- she deserved whatever fate the government came up with. But so far, other people were paying the price.
The problem was that she didn't know his reasons and she couldn't decide whether to try second-guessing him. He had implied that the man leading the investigation the apparently camera-shy Mark Beamon was a fairly reasonable guy. Erin could tell him where she was whenever he wanted. So, for the time being at least, she was stuck.
Jenna picked up a sabotaged computer and tossed it through the door onto the teetering pile of debris she'd cleared from the warehouse. The lab was more or less in order again, with all the furniture upright and covered with improvised equipment. She assumed that the government had found Erin by watching medical equipment sellers, leaving her no choice but to provision the lab with hobby microscopes, petri dishes adapted from Wal-Mart containers, and incubators made out of toaster ovens. Even that had been a risky operation, though. Her credit card was undoubtedly being monitored and she assumed that the local police had a description of her and Jonas's car from the altercation at the airport.
Not that she would have to worry about either of those problems for much longer.
When it had become clear that the fuel shortage was going to persist, companies began passing their higher energy costs through to their customers -- creating the first double-digit inflation in years and running her credit card up faster than she'd anticipated. Combine that with the fact that she was nearly out of gas and not exactly in a position to go pick up her ration card, it wouldn't be long before she was reduced to shoplifting and getting away on foot.
She walked over to one of her homemade incubators and peered inside. Despite a valiant effort, Udo hadn't been able to completely sterilize the lab before abandoning it. She'd found a bacteria sample in a small puddle of oil hidden by an overturned table. It had appeared dead at first, but she'd babied it, fed it, and watched over it. Now it was growing. Fast.
Chapter
29.
The darkness continued to amplify Erin Neal's rage, fanning it to a point where nearly everything else was almost completely swallowed. Even the pain.
He'd been blindfolded since he'd been forced onto the jet that had brought him to wherever he was now. How long ago was that? Days? Weeks? Without eyes, there was no way to see the light come and go, to measure the time he'd spent lying naked in a cold concrete cell or contorted into positions meant to break him. For the last hour, or two, or ten, he'd been bent over what felt like a metal railing, his left hand and right ankle handcuffed together at the bottom. A flow of icy water -- somewhere between an energetic drip and a light stream -- was falling from the ceiling, and no matter how creatively he used his limited maneuvering room, he couldn't get away from it or bring it to his cracked lips.
He yanked violently on his handcuffs for what must have been the thousandth time, but the effort was barely enough to even send a jolt of pain up his arm anymore. He was so tired. The fury that he'd spent so much time trying to control was about all that was keeping him going now. But even that was weakening.
He thought about Jenna, and, for one of the few times in his life, wished he could believe in God. If he did, he'd pray that she had just kept on driving -- that she had crossed into Mexico and was on her way somewhere that no one would ever find her. His only regret was that he would never get a chance to give her the swift kick in the ass she had coming.
He didn't hear anything he never did but suddenly someone grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, erasing the imperceptible smile that thoughts of Jenna still had the power to create. There was no way to know how many of them there were --enough to make fighting pointless as the handcuff on his ankle was released and he was rammed face-first into the deep puddle he'd been standing in. The blood rushed from his head, making the darkness he'd been living in swirl sickeningly. He managed a weak, frustrated scream as he felt himself being dragged across the concrete, but that was all.
"Wake up!"
Erin jerked his face away from the smelling salts and opened his eyes, squinting against the light. It took a moment to focus, but he finally recognized the man sitting in front of him as the one who had taken him from Mark Beamon.
"Well, congratulations, Erin. You've made it through your first day. Not bad for a science geek."
Erin felt the breath catch in his chest. One day? It had only been a day? How --
He closed his eyes for a moment, forcing himself to calm down. Of course, the man was lying.
"One day? Already?" Erin said, testing the handcuffs securing him to a chair held to the floor by heavy bolts. "The battery in my watch must be dead."
"Funny," the man said, flashing a smile that suggested an addiction to tooth whitener. He had the buzz cut and clipped, efficient sentences of a military man, but there was a pale softness to him that made it all an obvious lie. His unimaginatively casual clothes seemed impossibly crisp next to Erin's battered, naked body -- the impression of clean, dry warmth undoubtedly intended.
"Word is you're not stupid," the man said. "So you know what we want. We want to know what reserves you've hit, who was involved, and how to stop the progression of the bacteria. And make no mistake you're going to tell us. Everyone does. It's just a question of how long."
Erin didn't answer. He wasn't so arrogant to believe that he wouldn't eventually succumb to the lack of sleep, the pain, the constant cold and hunger. How long before they were able to confuse him? To get him to say something he shouldn't?
It was possible that they already knew about Jenna and -- to disorient him weren't saying anything, but it was just as possible that they didn't and the difference between her getting away and getting gang raped in the cell next to him was how long he could hold out.
"What would it hurt to give us a name, Erin? The damage is done, right? You were too smart for us. What can we do now?"
Erin let out a short laugh, a string of blood-tinted spit extending slowly from his lip.
"Did I miss something funny?"
"You're already ramping-up production in Canada's tar sands one of the most environmentally disgusting processes ever dreamed up. And you've taken all the environmental controls off the coal industry. What are you so afraid of? A hundred years from now, your grandkids will be driving their SUVs through the smog and wondering what the sky looks like. Congratulations."
The man nodded slowly, obviously recalculating his approach. "Maybe they will. But what about the people living now, Erin? What have you done to them? Like you say, no one in the U. S. is going to starve over this. But what about Congo?"
"So if I tell you what you want to know, you're going to take the oil that's left and give it to the poor? Your goons have a lot more work to do before I'll buy that one."
"They have all the time in the world, Erin, and only you to focus on because we don't have anyone else. What about the other people involved? Maybe they're really the ones responsible and not you. Maybe you just got caught up in all this. But we have no way of knowing because you won't help us find them. I admire your sense of loyalty, Erin, but why should you suffer when they're sitting on a beach somewhere drinking cocktails? Do you think they'd do it for you?"
It was impossible not to think of Michael Teague and the fact that staying quiet about Jenna was keeping that officious little prick safe, too. On the other hand, every hour that went by made it harder not to start rooting for him. Fuck this guy and fuck the world.
The man reached into a bag on the floor and Erin tensed, but when his hand reappeared it held a laptop and not the pliers and scalpels he'd expected.
"Recognize it, Erin? It's yours."
Obviously they'd discovered that his password was a little harder to guess than his birthday.
"Why don't you help us get into this, Erin? As an act of good faith. And I'll return that good faith with a blanket, a mattress, and a hot meal. Help us stop this and maybe all that work in the tar sands, all that coal smoke, and all those dead African children won't be necessary."
"There's nothing in there that will help you," he said truthfully. "And when you find that out, where will that leave me and my new mattress? I don't think so."
"If there's nothing in here, then what do you have to lose? Why not take a chance and let me prove to you that my word is good?"
Erin looked directly into the man's well-groomed face. "Because of what might be in there. That hard drive could have everything you need to stop this and the name of every person involved. All right there less than a foot away from you. That's my little piece of revenge."
The man jumped from his chair and slammed a fist into the side of Erin's head. "Do you think this is a fucking game? Do you have any idea what we do to terrorists? No, actually, you don't. Those pictures you saw on TV from Abu Ghraib? That's nothing!"
Behind him a door opened and two men in military uniforms came in carrying a crank-driven generator with two wires leading from it. Erin wasn't paying much attention, though, instead focusing on the crotch of the man in front of him. It was hovering tantalizingly close and, though Erin's hands were hopelessly secured to the chair, his feet were free.
"Do you hear me, Erin? You won't fucking survive finding out what --"
He brought his foot up between the man's legs with every ounce of strength he had left, imaging that he could feel the testicles spectacularly and permanently exploding into useless blobs of flesh that would soon turn gangrenous.
His tormentor sank slowly to the floor as the two soldiers dove at Erin, one grabbing his legs while the other closed an arm around his throat. He barely noticed though, still fixated on the man taking shallow, labored breaths on the floor in front of him. It was an image that would sustain him for another week. Maybe more if he was lucky.
Chapter
30.
Nothing tangible had changed in the office, but still the atmosphere was almost completely unrecognizable. As Beamon started across the busy room, no one would look him fully in the eye -- instead, his people subtly adjusted their trajectories away from him, or, if that failed, mumbled polite greetings before rushing off. He'd experienced the same thing before, of course, and always found it a little like being a ghost: invisible most of the time, but if he yelled "boo," about half the room's occupants would have heart attacks.
That awkward environment made the man threading his way through the crowd even more obvious. Not only did he seem to be able to see Beamon, but he appeared completely unafraid.
He couldn't have been more than thirty-five -- a sharp-looking kid who made a production of glaring at the expensive watch on his wrist. Whether that was to indicate how busy he was or to suggest that Beamon was tardy for his walk of shame was unclear.
"Bob Oberman wants to see you."
"And where exactly would I find him?"
He pointed to the office that, until yesterday, Beamon had occupied and then examined his watch again. Not a Rolex -- something more subtle. Maybe Cartier.
"Right away," he prompted.
Beamon nodded noncommittally and floated past the people who used to work for him, stopping briefly in front of a stack of boxes carelessly stuffed with his personal effects, before peeking into his former office.