Book 3: 3rd World Products, Inc (37 page)

"We can't take that chance, Ed."

"Goddamnit, Wallace! I'm in the middle of it down here! I
know
what I'm talking about! The stair doors are...” A gun sounded and the big white fire door to the stairs was torn open. “Oh, shit. Forget that, they just got a fire door open. No, wait! Wallace! Linda! Use that flitter as an isolation booth and get the team off the roof anyway. Talk to Stephie about what can be done with their fields, but lift that goddamn flitter
now!
"

Steph broke in with, “I'm lifting the flitter now, Ed. Be careful down there, please."

I said, “Will do, ma'am,” as Linda said, “Steph, put that flitter down!"

"No, Linda. You're following inappropriate protocols. That flitter is now an isolation booth, as Ed said. It is totally secured."

Wallace came on and said, “Stephanie, this is your only warning. Set that flitter down or we'll open fire."

I almost laughed, but I wasn't ready to be found by the ravening horde in the hallway. Linda told Wallace to stand down, but he wasn't in the mood to listen.

"Wallace,” I said, “Where did I shoot to test the Beretta?"

He seemed not to have heard me over his own shouting at Stephie, then he and Linda got into a shouting match.

"All right!” she said. “
Okay! Shoot
at a flitter full of our
own
people, Emory! Shoot until you
realize
... Oh, hell, never mind. Just
do
it. Steph, he doesn't know. Let him wear out his goddamned trigger finger if he wants to."

"Yes, Linda. In that case, Captain Wallace, you may fire when ready. Please make sure that you don't miss me and hit a building, sir."

I did laugh that time, as did Linda, but I kept my snickers lower than the noise level in the hallway. A moment later, Steph again invited Wallace to fire at her.

"No,” he said. “I have three old hands laughing at me in a situation like this, so I know I have my head up my ass about something."

Linda asked, “Three? Who's the third?"

"Stephanie, of course. Ed, how are things down in hell?"

The gun in the stairwell fired again, then again. Tough lock or a bad shot? Or maybe just two doors at about the same time?

"Well, things are kind of hellish, Cap. About the same as before, though, I'd guess. It sounds as if they got to the first floor. Maybe the third, too. You might want to hang a flitter over the roof for them to shoot at, guys. Just to catch the ammo. What are they doing about containment at ground level?"

"The cops have orders to shoot anyone trying to escape the building, Ed.
Before
they get outside. They know the situation."

"Well, tell the cops to shoot anyone who appears at a window, too, even though they might not be able to get through the field. If the stuff's as thick as water, someone could accidentally bodysurf away from the building from a window, I think. It would occur to me to try that, anyway."

"Copy that."

'Copy that.’ How often had I heard that reply over the years? Never in a situation this bad, though. How many people were there in Grand Forks? For that matter, how many of them would run like hell when they saw others dying and carry the disease to other cities?

A woman only a few feet away wailed and beat on one of the carts in futile frustration. I sighed at the thought of watching a hallway full of people such as her die, but I was wearing my five suit and a recording probe. Barring something stupid happening, I'd be able to walk out of there and go home later.

"Later, Control. I'm going for a walk and put together a sitrep. Moving on."

"Copy that,” said Linda. She'd heard my tone. “Sorry, Ed,” she added.

"Yeah. Later."

Wandering down the hall to the elevator, I saw what had happened to the guys in biosuits. Not pretty. People had resented those bright yellow protective outfits worn only by the privileged very few. The people who had attacked them hadn't fared well, either. Bullet-riddled bodies lay all around the biosuit guys as if from a scene in some perverse parody of the battle for the Alamo.

It seemed likely to me that those with guns would probably shoot at anything abnormal, so I refrained from carrying the Beretta in my hand, where it could be seen, and simply moved very quietly. I went down the fire stairs when they'd cleared a bit, picking my way carefully past people who seemed not to give a damn that something somehow felt, but unseen, had gone past them.

Maybe some of them thought that I was an angel of death and were glad to see me pass them by. All they really knew was that to go downstairs was to die and to go up was to die more slowly. Helluva choice, that.

I began to encounter posters on the stairwell walls with slogans and pictures that seemed to try to combine some sick variant of white power “Christianity” with a virulent anti-Amaran message. The only difference I could see from the time before the Amarans was the group's late willingness to accept contributions and assistances even from the “mud races” and just about anyone else, including the Jews.

I let the probe have a good look at each poster in turn, ending the show with, “Damn. The only thing that could get these people to stop killing each other and work together was the thought of killing someone else they all hated more. It's hard to see this and not think
'good riddance'
. Wonder why they didn't have these posters all over the place upstairs, too? Those people would surely have needed this shit as badly as the front office staff, don't you think?"

Linda said, “Steph is reporting your bioscans as somewhat high, Ed."

"I've been climbing stairs and you're seeing what I'm seeing down here in Nazi-Never-Never-Land. Have her check yours, too, Linda. I'm fine."

There was no answer to that; no
'Copy that,'
or anything else.

A spate of shooting that seemed to crest into a full-fledged gun battle lasted for long minutes on the first floor. I waited until it had died to sporadic firing before I descended the final flight of stairs and peeked into the first floor of the warehouse. It was nearly empty. I went to a window and looked outside.

There were bodies everywhere around the open doors and the missing windows. The cops had followed orders very well. Even shooting through the field's rough equivalent of water, if someone had made it halfway to the gutter, they'd been cut down. None had escaped the field.

"Question, Elkor; if your field has the consistency of water and no atmospheric exchange, how am I hearing all that police gunfire?"

"You aren't, Ed. The gunfire you heard came from within the building. I bolstered that area of the field during that time to slow the bullets as much as possible before they escaped to the streets."

"Ho-ly shit. It sounded like a hot firefight down there. You're saying it was nothing but a breakout attempt?"

"Correct, Ed. All of the gunfire you could possibly have heard had to have come from within the building."

"Wow. I'll say it again, then.
'Good riddance'
."

A man who'd been crouching behind a shattered concrete trash barrel near the main doors struggled for breath and tried to crawl back inside the building, but he didn't make it. He seemed terribly confused as he slumped gaspingly to the sidewalk.

I walked past all the windows and doors to allow the probe to record every grisly detail; past so many men and women whose great dream of poisoning the world into submission had been shattered in less than an hour by one of their own zealots.

Some were fairly well dressed and others wore work clothes. People of disparate colors, religions, and creeds had banded together to fight what they perceived as an evil with an evil of their own making.

In doing so they had achieved a rancid sort of unity, even as they freely admitted hating one another, but they all had one undeniable thing in common that night. It was their last night on Earth, and they were going to die hated and reviled among the very people they had hated and reviled most until the Amarans had arrived.

Someone with a scoped rifle crawled to keep out of sight of the cops as he headed for the building's front doors. A few more people followed him, whether truly believing they'd have a chance to escape or because they were simply following someone who dared to move, I didn't know. At some point he realized that he had a following of sorts and tried to mount a charge out the front doors.

They quickly realized the breathing difficulty within the field, even if they didn't understand it, but they saw the cops breathing easily half a block away and decided that they had to try again. The guy talked them aboard an old electric forklift and, with a human shield of his followers hanging around and in front of him, the guy began his run at the front doors.

There was nobody around me that I could see, so I pulled my Beretta and fired four times at his back. He arched and stiffened, but the vehicle kept rolling. There was an AK on the floor near me. I didn't check to see if it was loaded, I just aimed at the thin rubber wheels on the left side of the forklift and tried to shred them quickly.

Nine rounds later, the AK was empty, but the forklift banked left and then right before it overbalanced from its speed, the extra people on it, and the slope of the sidewalk. At least two people were trapped under it when it fell on its side. The scoped rifle and the man it was attached to spilled onto the sidewalk. He lay still. The three others who had been on the vehicle ran for the street.

The cops stopped the runners with a hail of bullets within a couple of feet of the gutter. One big guy's hand actually touched the edge of the gutter when he fell. I didn't know the exact extent of Elkor's field, so I pushed my way through it and reached to snag the guy's sleeve with the front sight of the AK because—despite my five suit—I didn't want to touch him. A pull brought his arm back aboard the sidewalk. Hooking his collar didn't work. It tore. I hooked his belt and dragged his bulk inchingly backward.

Linda asked, “Ed, what are you doing? The cops report unusual movement at the field perimeter. They say a rifle is moving itself."

"Let ‘em say whatever they want, as long as they don't shoot. That's a hint, Linda. I'm trying to drag a guy back from the gutter without touching him myself. I'm using an AK to snag his belt and pull him."

"Copy that. We'll relay the info immediately."

"Yes, please. No holes in me, please. Tell them to watch, but not shoot."

"Confirmed, Ed. They say they'll hold their fire."

"Good. Wunnerful. Except maybe for that
one
cop who
didn't
get the word. I think I'll get done and get the hell out of here, anyway, ma'am."

"That's probably for the best, Dragonfly. Wallace is reminding them again."

"Tell him that covers the beer today, and thanks."

"I heard that,” said Wallace. “No deal. Saving your ass is worth a six-pack, at least. Say otherwise and I'll tell a hundred cops that we don't know the ghost with the rifle."

"Okay, okay! You have five to go. Thanks, anyway, Simon Legree."

"De nada. You about finished messing around out there?"

"Yeah. The body is halfway back to the building. Well inside the field. I'm..."

An explosion that sounded like a shotgun made me flatten and aim the Beretta back toward the antique forklift. The cops started firing immediately. I was close to the building and scurried inside. I saw nobody aiming a weapon, but one of the red panels on the back of the forklift was lying on the sidewalk.

I yelled, “Tell the cops to hold their fire, dammit! No target! No target!"

Linda asked, “Ed? What was that? Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Tell the cops to save their ammo. One of the forklift batteries exploded. Scared the hell out of me. Sounded like a twelve-gauge going off."

Wallace said, “Hey, maybe that's why they started shooting, d'ya think?"

"Linda,” I said, “I thought you liked men your own age or at least close to it."

She said, “Old guys pontificate all the time. At least this one can keep up with me in the mornings."

"Yeah? Well, you check him out later and see if he's got any polydactyl characteristics. That could explain a lot, couldn't it?"

In truth, the word was no more than a label for creatures that had extra fingers or toes or other digits, but I was betting that Wallace would have no idea what
'polydactyl'
meant. There was silence for some moments until Linda started snickering. Wallace didn't know the word and he was too proud to ask about it.

I heard someone else on the flitter ask what the hell was so funny in the middle of something like this. At least four people told him to shut up and one guy said, “Pete, stuff like this starts hurting real fast if you don't keep it light, so shut up until you've been in it for real. You're just watching it on that TV thing. You don't know shit."

Linda called a halt to that discussion fairly quickly.

"When it's as bad as it gets, go with gallows humor,” she said, perhaps to Pete or perhaps to everybody. “If you can't, you probably won't last very long on these missions. Now everybody shut up."

Everybody up there shut up as ordered. I saw smoke near the ceiling and said so.

"Steph,” I said as I walked around the first floor and searched for smoke, “Can you find the fire? If it's bad, I either have to get back to the roof or wade into the street pretty quick."

"Working on it, Ed. Okay. I've found it in the wall above the front doors. Sporadic shortings indicate that an electrical line has been damaged."

"Thanks, Steph. Guess I'd better get the hell out of here fast, then. I see smoke coming from a hole I can't reach without a long ladder, and there isn't one of those in sight."

The sound of a gun cocking made me shut up and step back quickly and quietly as I looked around. I didn't see anyone, but there are damned few things in this world that
aren't
guns that can make that sound properly.

A woman's hysterical voice yelled, “I
heard
you walk in here and I
heard
you talkin’ about fire, devil. That's
right!
I
know
who you are! I know you done come here for me, but I'll shoot you
dead
if you come anywhere near me, devil."