Independence Day Plague (2 page)

Geller looked bemused, “I didn’t know our discussions went beyond the door.” Geller was Mitchell’s immediate boss and good friend. They often talked while waiting on experiments.

“
Only to Caroline, no one else,” Mitchell replied. He looked at her again. She returned his gaze with a questioning one, eyes bright and clear. He placed his drink on a passing tray and wiped a hand across his eyes. Despite the coolness of the room, he felt damp with sweat. “I think that’s enough drink.”

“
Caroline, I couldn’t agree with you more. Man must evolve.” Geller said, “But evolution can’t be forced. Unfortunately, man is a predator and killing always will be the thing he’s best at. The Chinese threat is the best example of that. As integrated as communications are today, they know that we can’t shift our satellites out of their territory. The skies practically overflow with hundreds of satellites. They spy on us; we spy on them. It is saber rattling and it’s going to get louder. We know they’re doing chemo/bio warfare preparations. If we don’t have the vaccines ready, America will be at a tremendous disadvantage.”

“
And you consider China a national threat?” Caroline continued.

“
One of several. Consider this. From 2006 to 2010, China exported several processed materials, chemicals and products that were defective and, in some cases, deadly. Once discovered, the items were quickly removed from the market and apologies issued. What if someone in the Chinese government used the incident to discover weaknesses in our inspection and response systems? Now it’s a build-up of arms and an argument of what constituted legal limits in the skies. Shooting down satellites will destroy our communication, Internet and hypernet systems.”

It must be tiredness and drink, Mitchell thought. He looked around the room again. The world seemed to slow down and tilt at a crazy angle. Forester and his men entered the room and went straight to their seats. His stomach lurched with nausea. The light from the deep red sun intensified and filled the room with bloody looking light. Suddenly it felt hard to breathe.

“
Why do you think we’re shutting down?” Caroline spoke again.

Geller leaned closer, his voice dropped to a conspiring whisper. “Somehow we’ve become an embarrassment or something has made us obsolete. For the bases to stay secret, we must disappear.”

Security at the Bio Labs existed at the highest conceivable levels. Not one of the research members or their families existed to the outer world except for the most minor of paperwork such as bankcards or drivers’ licenses. The military personnel provided the usual forms of red tape through military channels.

The research at the base was cutting-edge science but no one presented talks at conferences or published papers. Computer communications were limited and always monitored. No bloggers, website diarists, or even private websites were allowed for the people living at the lab. Whenever anyone left the premises for a conference or went on vacation, they had to apply for permission. After being carefully screened, they were then shadowed the entire time. Eventually, it became easier not to leave at all.

Mitchell shifted back to his wife. "We need to leave. The drink—there's something wrong with the drink."

“
Aren’t you being a little paranoid?” Oblivious of his words, Caroline continued talking to Geller. “It’s not like they’re going to line up four hundred-fifty people against the wall and shoot them. People will notice us being gone.”

“
Will they?” Geller replied. “How many people do you call or write to on the outside? How many extended family members really know anything about your last few weeks or even years? How long would it take before someone realized you were missing? A few months or even a few years?”

"Ray—" Mitchell stepped forward, head aching with each movement.

Geller smiled, “Sorry Caroline, just my ranting. No, they'll distribute us amongst the teeming masses in the big cities. But we'll probably never see each other again.” Geller nibbled on a cheese square.

“
Have you gotten your new assignment yet?” Caroline asked.

“
No, not yet. You?”

“
We’ve asked for a small town veterinary practice that I can take over.” Caroline replied.

The catering staff banged through the swinging kitchen doors flourishing loaded trays. The smell of roast beef and chicken rose and mingled with the other delicious odors from the kitchen. The caterers were Army, flown in with all their supplies for the occasion. Caroline gently pulled Mitchell towards their seats. He followed, unresisting with tears flowing down his cheeks. “Guess we’d best take our seats," she said.

Everyone shuffled and wound their way towards their assigned seats with a scuffing of chairs and clinking of glasses. As waiters moved between the tables with pitchers of tea and water, an Army colonel dressed in formal uniform gave a short sentimental speech. Mitchell knew Col. Forester on sight. The man was always cool and distant so the sentimentality he displayed now seemed artificial. Whenever the colonel appeared, it was to gather progress reports or to whip the workers into a new course of action. Tonight, he looked tense and paler than usual. He finished the speech with an apology for rushing off. Mitchell heard Clark mutter from a nearby table. “Too good to eat with the grunts.”

The three men filed out of the large hall just as waiters entered and began bringing plates to each table.

Ray Geller’s five kids, ranging from three to eleven, sat quietly at their family table in a rare act of good behavior. Mitchell grinned at the youngest one, Anita who Katie often babysat. She returned a shy smile; her cheeks now looked sunburned red. He stared as pink, blood-mixed tears trickled down in furrows, dripping onto the white ruffles on her dress.

Mitchell gasped. A hand tugged on his gray jacket as Katie whispered, “Dad, are you okay?” He turned towards his sixteen-year-old daughter and watched as her honey colored hair turned dull and limp. He grasped her hand on his sleeve. It felt hot and tiny vessels broke under his hands, darkening her skin from red to deep purple. A dull roar filled his ears as he looked at her. Blood flowed slowly from her nose and leaked from the edges of her eyes. “Daddy?” she whispered as tiny capillaries in her skin broke one by one and purple bruising swelled on her pale cheeks.

“
Katie,” he cried as she shook with spasms and fell into his arms. People around him began moaning and crying, their voices blending into a shrieking cacophony.

He lowered Katie back into her chair and turned around. “Caroline, help me!” he shouted.

“
I’m here, Jim.” Caroline spoke from behind him.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up.

Caroline’s face and chest were covered in hundreds of blacken skin tears, each oozing fluid. Her eyes were sightless red orbs, and her body began to shake. Blood spilled from her open mouth. She screamed his name and fell upon him. Blood smeared across his face and hands.

Around him, the pale celebrants turned towards him one by one, moaning in pain, some calling his name. As they moved, they too, began to shake and split open. Their features melted into horrifying masks. The voices rose into a screeching din encouraged on by the screaming of one voice…

The scream ripped through the night and woke him. Mitchell shot up in bed, eyes wide and heart pounding in his ears. His throat felt raw and tight. He gasped for air, willing himself to slow down his breathing and the pounding ache in his chest. It took him a few moments to realize that he was not in cold North Dakota but in warm Landover, Maryland. The night breeze stirred the bedroom’s faded curtains, showing glimpses of the dark street outside. The alarm clock glowed red numbers, fifteen past five from the chipped dresser.

His stomach lurched and he ran for the bathroom, vomiting. Afterwards, he splashed water on his face and then stared at the pale old man in the mirror. The images, half memory, half guilt-ridden nightmare played across his mind again. They were getting worse over the last few weeks. With shaking hands, he picked up the snapshots of his wife and daughter. Caroline’s soft smile seemed to beckon him while Katie, only fourteen when the picture was taken, looked impertinent to the point of cocky. “I love you.” He whispered, “I’ll join you soon.”

The bare light bulb in the bathroom made his skin look sallow as he stared at his own brown, bloodshot eyes. At forty-eight years old, he wasn’t much to look at, not particularly handsome or ugly. He was average height and still fairly fit with light brown hair flecked with a little gray. He usually wore it closely cropped but now it grew long and unruly. In truth, his lack of distinction had served him well over the last few weeks. In a suit, he blended in to the business-suit, corporate worker world. Often called corp clones, they bustled in and out of the subways from dawn to dusk with com-units tucked into ears and comp-screen glasses in front of their eyes.

Dressed down in old jeans and t-shirt, he passed for one of the many unemployed littering the walkways and park benches, or local nature zealots, Greenies that came to town to sell their produce. Most urban dwellers considered the Greenies only slightly better than the jobless. The farmer types eschewed all things technological and yet often stood first in line at the many free clinics around the area. The right shirt with the right saying let him fade in as one of a dozen new religious zealots, street missionaries promising a better life or the end of the world. Mitchell moved in and out of society without leaving a mental wake behind, a soulless man lost in a soulless world.

He felt such lack of identity when he looked in the mirror. His life had been wrapped up in BL-4. The man who looked out wasn’t the same man who graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins. He wasn’t the same man that existed a year ago. Mitchell, the man, had been replaced with Mitchell, the murderer, with over two hundred kills already preying like leeches on his consciousness. He splashed the water on his face, wiped, and then placed the towel over the mirror. No time for memories now. It was time to work on the grand plan. If a murderer he was, then a legendary murderer he would be.

Mitchell rubbed his eyes and sat down at the large, battered oak desk as the small refrigerator and cabinet top autoclave hummed behind him. The desk was barely big enough as a countertop space and had to be modified with several sheets of folded paper to make it stable enough for delicate work. The bits of machinery and circuits laid in neat rows across the chipped top. The printed designs for an automated aerosol unit and timer were stacked neatly to one side and emblazoned with Internet advertising. Building the units separately was not difficult, and the timer needed only a small modification. The largest portion, the liquid reservoir, contained fifty milliliters of fluid. The prototype was slightly larger than palm-sized without the fluid reservoir and irregularly shaped, but its lack of contours didn’t bother Mitchell. The black gizmo-look would blend into the other machinery in the air duct to the casual observer.

Mitchell snapped in the large polyethylene test tube of water and carried the prototype outside to hang on the clothesline, a rotting relic of twentieth-century life that was common in the decaying Maryland neighborhood. The machine hung heavy on the hook, making the rope sag in the center. Mitchell peered through the slates of the seven-foot fence, checking neighbor houses for lights and movement. All was silent. He stepped back to the corner of the house, fifteen feet away before activating the small, radio-controlled switch in the pocket of his black jeans.

A loud pop went off and the jiggling aerator explosively sprayed high-pressure liquid in four directions, blasting against the house and across the faded cedar fence.

He smiled humorlessly. It worked. Now, nothing would stop him from completing his plans for the Fourth of July celebration. Plenty of time remained for building the many other aerosol systems and the small explosive devices.

He left the wet gizmo dripping on the line as he stepped into the old house. After shaving and showering, he stood in front of the clothes closet, examining the different personalities represented there. The hangers held denims, cloth-checkered work shirts, stylish suits, button down dress shirts, a military uniform, and some janitor grays. He reached for the personality he was to become today, the blue shirt and pants of the Metro repairman.

Mike Dorado carried his coffee into the glass cage that constituted his and McAfee’s office. The station was in the heart of DC, a few blocks from the Smithsonian and located as part of the old but prestigious L’Enfant offices. Most of the other detectives had desks scattered across the large common room. At times, the noise would be roaring loud and nothing was ever private. When an elderly lieutenant retired last year, Dorado used his senior time in rank to snatch up the precious office space before the administration could take it away. Now he often wondered if the glass kept the noise out or just imprisoned him in.

The door swung open as Dorado hung his black coat on a hook next to McAfee’s brown one. Captain Starker walked in. “Where’s McAfee?”

“
Hasn’t shown up yet, but he’ll be here soon.” Dorado lied. His partner probably was jawing it up with some pretty coworker over by the coffee pot.

“
That’s okay. I want to talk to you private for a while.” The captain squished his large frame into McAfee’s rolling chair, which groaned under the weight. Dorado didn’t know much about Starker’s early life but would bet money that the man played football in college. Although large, he moved with an aged grace often found in former athletes. Dorado suspected the captain never had trouble running down a suspect or thumping a guy into a wall when needed.