Flowertown (23 page)

With a grunt, she inchwormed her body back out of the hole. Her stomach once again held her weight as she pulled her shoulders clear of the drain. Before she could get a handhold, however, the air whooshed out of her body as a something incredibly heavy smashed into the small of her back, pinning her to the metal drain. She couldn't even cry out as the lighter flew from her lips and the pill bottle squirted from her fingers, both disappearing in the darkness below her. Stars exploded before her eyes as blood rushed to her head and pain flooded her mind, but the only thought she could understand was the need to gasp for air as rough hands lifted her out of the hole and slammed her down on her back on the concrete.

Heaviness fell upon her again, this time on her hips, pinning her to the ground. Her ears rang with the concussion of her skull against the pavement, and she swung her hands uselessly into the blackness before her. There was a face, difficult to see over the mountain of black that pinned her to the ground, cutting off her air. Ellie struggled to squirm free, but a thick hand clamped down over her mouth and the face came into clear view in the darkness.

“Make a sound and I'll break your neck, do you understand?” Fletcher, Guy's overweight partner, leaned in close enough for her to smell his breath. His hand was hot and sweat dripped from his forehead onto hers. “Nod if you understand me.” Ellie nodded as best she could, the weight of his hand making the gravel beneath her skull grate into her skin. In his free hand, he held a gun. “I'm going to take my hand away. If you scream, you'll regret it.”

Ellie gulped in air as Fletcher lifted his weight slightly from her body. He kept the gun trained on her as he pulled his radio from his belt. Rather than speak, however, he pressed the talk button several times for different lengths of time, his eyes flickering from her to the darkness around them. In a moment, the radio sparked in short bursts of static, someone pressing the talk button as well, answering him in a code of static. The message received, Fletcher leaned once more into her face, whispering.

“How much did you put down there?”

“I didn't put anything down there.”

He brought the gun to her forehead. “We don't have time for this shit. Where is the C-4?”

“What?” Ellie's breath came in pants as the gun cut into her skin. “C-4? Like explosives? I don't have anything to do with that. I didn't set that bomb.”

Fletcher shushed her as the sound of a truck engine rumbled closer. Moving quickly despite his bulk, he jumped to his feet and jerked Ellie up with him, pinning her to him with his hand over her mouth once more. The truck approached down the avenue. Fletcher quickly and silently dragged her into the darkest shadows between dumpsters, pressing her with him against the metal bin.

Ellie struggled to breathe over his rough fingers, and it was only the gun pressing into her temple that kept her from stomping his foot with her own. Instead she stood silently, waiting, as a Feno security truck rolled slowly through the explosion site, headlights off, nearly invisible. Within the truck, two Feno guards scanned the area, peering into shadows, while two more with machine guns rode in the truck bed. Ellie felt Fletcher stiffen behind her, not relaxing until the truck was long out of earshot. He let the gun drop from her temple as he stuck his head out from between the dumpsters and scanned the scene.

“Fletcher?” Ellie whispered, not wanting his fat hand clamped over her mouth again.

“Shut up.” He pulled her closer to him.

“Fletcher, it's me, Ellie. Guy's friend, Ellie.”

“I know who you are.” He ducked back in, not looking at her. “Now shut up and stay still or I'll coldcock you, understand?” It was a pretty simple command to comprehend, and Ellie nodded. She tried to put some distance between her back and the heat of Fletcher's chest, but he pulled her tightly to him again. She hoped he couldn't feel Guy's stolen gun still tucked in the back of her jeans.

Several long moments passed, and the fatigue from her wasted effort at the drain left Ellie no choice but to lean heavily against Fletcher's large frame. He didn't seem to notice the burden, keeping her tucked under his arm, his attention on the darkness of the avenue. Somewhere to the left, another argument broke out, maybe the same couple still at it, and glass shattered on the street. Fletcher didn't move, didn't shift his position until something metallic pinged on a nearby dumpster. He stiffened again, tight
ening his grip on her, and leaned out toward the sound. In a moment, three quick pings sounded to the right and Fletcher exhaled. Using the butt of his gun, he tapped the dumpster behind him twice, paused, then twice again. Seconds later, soft footsteps hurried toward their location.

It was hard to see faces in the shadows, but Ellie recognized Porter, another of Guy's army buddies, slipping into the space between dumpsters, followed by two other men and one woman, none of whom she recognized. Nobody spoke. Nobody looked at her. They crowded into the narrow space, looking out onto the street until the unmistakable figure of Guy moved out of the shadows and joined them.

“What have you got?” he whispered to Fletcher.

“Something you should have taken care of.” Fletcher grabbed Ellie by the back of the neck and pushed her forward. “Found her crawling out of a runoff drain.”

Guy swore under his breath. Ellie started to explain, but Fletcher jerked her back by her hair and hissed in her ear. “Shut up. Keep your goddamn voice down.” A word from Guy and he released her once more. Guy pulled Ellie toward him, too close, as he always did, although this time Ellie doubted he wanted her to massage him. In the faint light from across the street, she could see a dark stain on the side of his face, no doubt from Bing's board.

“I didn't put anything in that drain,” she whispered. “I was looking for something.”

Guy stared at her for a moment and then turned to Fletcher. “Did you search the hole?” Fletcher's silence was his answer. Guy looked to the much taller and slimmer Porter. “Get out there and search the drain.” Porter slipped into the shadows as Fletcher sputtered.

“What the hell else would she be doing in a runoff drain?”

“Let's ask her. Ellie?”

Finally given the chance to talk, Ellie feared words would fail her. She turned her back on the other soldiers and whispered only to Guy. “I left meds in there. Red pills.”

Fletcher snorted. “In the runoff drain. That makes sense.”

Ellie ignored him. “It's a long story, but I needed those pills for…” She didn't want to tell him who was involved. “I just needed the pills. I stashed them there after the explosion.” She grimaced, knowing how that must sound. “It's a long story, Guy, but you've got to trust me.”

“I don't need to trust you, Ellie.” He looked out into the shadows. “I need there to be no C-4 in that runoff drain.”

“There isn't! At least I didn't put any there. Why would I?”

Guy turned back to her. “We've dismantled six loads of explosives tonight. They were all set with remote triggers, and they were all big enough to blow everyone in this compound to hell and back. If you know anything about this—”

“I swear to God I don't. I swear. Nobody has said anything about blowing the zone up. Why would they?”

“You tell me.” He squeezed her arm. “Don't deny you're working with All You Want. I know the locals have contacted you. You have to tell them the plan is not going to work. They cannot blow their way out of Flowertown.”

“What are you talking about?” Ellie squirmed in his grip. “They don't want to blow anything up. They don't want to break containment. These are decent people who don't want Feno to make them disappear.” His grip loosened just
a touch. “Guy, they've heard that a bunch of people are getting released, a huge group. They're afraid that Feno plans on moving the people who are left to a hidden compound or even a testing facility.”

“Why would they think that?”

“The locals think Feno is scouting out new locations. They're worried that if the world sees a huge crowd being released, they'll forget about the people who weren't cured and Feno will try to erase them as unfixable mistakes. They're planning on taking a stand, on staying in Flowertown. They don't have explosives; they've got stores of food and guns to protect themselves.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think something bigger is going on, something worse.” She looked at the silent group around her. “Why else would you all be hiding from your own company?” The group shared a look, nobody offering an explanation. Porter broke the silence by slipping back into the group.

“The hole's clean.” He wiped his hands on his black pants. “There's nothing down there, no explosives, no triggers. Just garbage and whatever shit's been running through there.”

The radio on Guy's belt crackled with wordless static, a series of short bursts. Ellie seemed to be the only one who couldn't understand the code. “That's Marshall at the north med center. Fletcher, did you sweep the rest of this area?” The heavyset man nodded. “Okay, you all head up there, check in with Marshall, then wait for my go.”

“You're not coming?” Porter asked.

“In a second.” Guy stared down a look of disapproval from Fletcher as the group slipped out into the shadows. When everyone was out of earshot, Guy took Ellie's hand.

“Are you going to explain to me what you and Fletcher and the rest of your group are doing sneaking around, hiding from Feno?” Guy shook his head. “Let me guess. It's classified.”

“It is. And it's complicated.”

“I bet. This is a complicated night.”

Guy sighed and leaned back against the dumpster. “When we signed with Feno, they handed me the reins of security awfully quick. My team and I went from army outsiders to top dogs just like that, and overnight we're expected to investigate threats of violence from the locals, attempts to break containment, plots to destroy Flowertown. The evidence has been strong. We know there's an underground. We've found the C-4. Supplies are being destroyed. Fletcher, Porter, and I started thinking we were being set up to take the fall for a security breach that they had let happen.”

“I'm telling you, Guy, the locals are not behind the bombs.”

“If what you say is true, if you believe these people, then that means someone else is setting the explosives. Why would they do that? How does Feno gain from being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people?”

“It's not the death. It's the chaos. They're banking on Barlay to bail them out of their financial sinkhole with a vaccine they're marketing. They release the majority of the population as cured, then plant a few crazies like me in the crowd to blame for blowing the remaining people to smithereens. Domestic terrorists, a terrible tragedy, and the book is closed on Flowertown.” Ellie leaned back against the other dumpster, facing Guy. “And if the explosives are as big as you say, there won't be bodies to identify. Then they can
keep the threat of escapees and contamination alive and keep selling the vaccine.”

“You haven't seen these explosives, Ellie.” Guy looked out into the shadows. “If we don't find the rest of them and figure out what's going on, nobody's getting out of here alive.”

His radio crackled with coded static once again. Whatever the message, it made Guy swear under his breath. He held his hand up, motioning Ellie to silence, and leaned out from between the dumpsters. Ellie heard no sounds in the night, no arguments, no vehicles, no night noises. Guy stood still and tense, and then he motioned for Ellie to follow him. She hurried behind him and followed him away from the explosion site, down the avenue. He began to head north, but she grabbed his hand.

“Wait,” she whispered. “I've got to go to my apartment.”

“What?” Guy spun on her. “Don't you know what those trucks we've been avoiding are doing? They're either raiding locations or evacuating them under the pretense of security. My team wasn't informed of it, but we've seen it all night long. They're gathering everyone. We've dismantled explosives in three of the gathering locations. Ellie, I think we're in a deep pile of shit here. If they get their convoy out before we get these explosives cleared, we're going to have a big problem.”

Ellie pulled him by the hand. “I've got to find my pills, and I'm almost positive I left some in my pocket.” She heard Guy start to protest. “It's a long story. Just trust me. What's this convoy you're talking about?”

He hurried along beside her. “Fletcher picked up intel that a VIP convoy is being shuttled out tonight before the press conference. Feno officials, the psych team, the chemists. The official word is that they're sending a team out to prepare for the press, but that sounds unlikely, all things considered.”

Ellie led them down the alley a block from East Fifth. The power was out as far as she could see, and they ran through the shadows. “So these guys doing the raids, you think they're trying to kill everybody? Even the people who were supposed to be released? That's their plan?”

“I don't think so. I know these guys. I know what they're being told. They think they're doing the right thing.”

“You'll excuse me if I don't share your faith in Feno goons.” She fished around in the dark for the crowbar to pry open the back door.

Guy put his hand on her shoulder and let her lead him up the dark stairwell. “These are regular guys, not mercs. They have no reason to doubt what they've been told.”

“And you do?”

“Hell yes, I do. But I have alternate sources of information.” He grabbed her ass as they entered the third-floor hallway. “Like my crazy, drugged girlfriend.”

“I'm not exactly CNN, am I?”

He pulled her close to him in the dark. “You'll do.” He kissed her neck and whispered in her ear. “Now tell me what the hell we're doing here.”

Ellie pulled away, still holding him with her right hand and, with her left, feeling her way down the black hall. “I need to get evidence of what Feno's doing. Bing and Rachel are at the care center trying to get records. They want to try to sneak some evidence out with Bing.”

“Bing? You're going to trust your evidence with that idiot?” He followed her into her room and closed the door behind him.

“What is it with you two?” Ellie began feeling her way through the heap of dirty clothes.

“For one thing, he smashed my face with a club.”

Ellie sighed. “Yeah, I guess there's that. But I kicked you and you still like me. Besides, he was trying to help us get away. He was scared.”

“I don't trust him.”

“The feeling is mutual. Have you ever even spoken to him?”

“I don't like people with secrets. He's lucky, and I don't like lucky. I don't trust it.” He looked out the window as she searched. “There are trucks out front.”

“Lucky?” Ellie felt something hard in a pocket of a pair of jeans. “How exactly do you consider Bing lucky?”

“He doesn't just stay under the radar; he stays off it. He wasn't marked as a person of interest even though he deals marijuana, works in a classified position, and is a known channel of communication for All You Want.”

“No, he isn't. They don't know him at all. He didn't even know their code.”

“What code?”

Ellie sighed when she realized what she had found—Rachel's tooth. She couldn't leave it behind. She shoved
it in her pocket and kept searching. “I'm telling you, Bing knew nothing about the locals' plans.”

“And I'm telling you we've been monitoring his mail and his computer and we've found coded messages. What we could decipher has been pretty interesting.”

“Oh, I get those flyers too. I sent him one last week. They don't mean anything. And who the hell gets e-mail around here?”

“He does. He gets a lot. And it's encrypted.”

Before he could say more, harsh light seeped in under the door and a bullhorn voice yelled. “This is Feno security. This building is being evacuated for security purposes.” Heavy footsteps could be heard both in the hallway and overhead.

Ellie swore and pawed through the clothes. Finally she felt a tumble of pills in the pocket of another pair of jeans and scrambled to reach them.

“We've got to get out of here, Ellie.”

“The window.” She stuffed the handful of pills into the pocket that now held Rachel's tooth and climbed over her bed. She swung one leg out the window and peered down at the tarpaper roof of the hardware store several feet below. “We can make this jump.”

“We don't have a choice. Go.”

Ellie let her body slip off the sill and kept her knees bent as she collapsed on the roof below. Guy tumbled beside her seconds later and they lay flat, listening to shouts and thuds from the building above. Guy turned to her, but Ellie was smiling up at the sky. The yellow lights of the security trucks flashed below them.

“Are you all right?”

She laughed. “Do you know how many times I dreamed of doing that when I was in lockdown? I used to dream about it every night, just slipping out the window and running away. And then when they finally unbolted the window, I never did it. There was never any point.”

“You've got a good reason tonight. Let's lie low until the trucks pull away.” He reached out and took her hand.

“So you monitored Bing's mail. Did you monitor mine?”

Guy sighed. “I didn't, but it was in your file. It was in Bing's too, but it didn't get flagged. He's either dirty, stupid, or lucky, and I don't like any of those.”

Ellie heard shouts and complaints from the people filing out of East Fifth and rolled over, pressing into Guy's body. It was ridiculous. Flowertown was blowing up around them and all she could think about was the taste of his neck on her lips. Guy pulled her close, one hand around her waist, the other buried in her hair, guiding her face to his. The kiss was long and wet, and Ellie kept her eyes closed as Guy's hands moved over her body.

“Is that my gun?”

She ground her hips into his. “I was going to ask that same question.”

He pulled the gun from the back of her waistband. “Is this my gun?”

Ellie let out a long breath and tried to pull away, but Guy held her close, bringing the gun to her shoulder. “Yes, that's your gun.”

“Do you know how to use it?” She nodded. “Good.” He checked the clip and then slipped the weapon back into her jeans. “Keep it. Use it if you have to. Don't hesitate. If
you draw that weapon, you fire it. Ellie, I don't know what's going to happen tonight…”

She closed her eyes, not wanting to see the emotion in his eyes. “Guy, don't.”

“Listen to me.” He put his hands on her face. “I don't care what they say; I don't care what the plan is. Dr. Byrd and his crew can kiss my ass. You are not a weapon. You are not a pawn. Whatever happens tonight, they did it. Not you. Not the locals. I know that now. And if it takes my last breath, I'm going to expose them and their crazy manifesto.”

She put her forehead against his. “Manifesto?”

“It's all starting to make sense now. I never thought of the vaccine. All this crazy shit we found when Porter hacked the system.”

“Oh, you mean the wacko drugs? Making me flip out? Too late, I guess.”

Guy pulled away. “It's too late to use you, but they've got to have others in place. People who fit their profiles.”

“Whose profiles?”

“Byrd, Tabor, and Marcum,” Guy said. “The psych team.”

“The BTM scale.” Ellie rubbed her eyes, trying to remember what Olivia had told her. “Tabor was the doctor who tipped the locals off to what was going on. Told them about Horizon. Apparently he wasn't comfortable with what they were doing.”

“Which would explain why Dr. Tabor is dead. He's the only one we have an ID on. Rumor is Marcum is already out. But we've read their files, their data. Porter went deeper and read some of their older work. These guys are wack jobs. Byrd has a complete agenda for orchestrating a massive disaster; he's written books on it. His works are what
tipped us off to the Horizon plan, that psychotropic drugs were being used. It seemed impossible that Feno would try to put one of his plans into action, but that was before we found dozens of packets of C-4 buried in civilian buildings.”

“But if you can find all the explosives, they can't blow the place up. If word gets out that they've planted the bombs—”

“If word gets out. If we get out. We only know about the explosives in the buildings.” Guy stared up at the sky. “There's a total communication blackout with the outside until nine this morning when the press conference gets set up. We know about Horizon, but we don't know how many people they're planning on using. We don't know how many Hs there are or if that's the only weapon. You didn't read this guy's stuff, Ellie. These are sick people, and if Feno plans on implementing even a fraction of what he proposes, we've got a real problem.”

Ellie put her hands over her face, trying to collect her thoughts. “Look, they've got a limited pool of people to choose from, right? We know they're planning on pinning the violence on me and the other Hs. I saw the newscast. It looks like I'm the prime suspect. You've read this Dr. Byrd's stuff. What else does he need for his event?”

Guy ticked them off on his fingers. “He says to maximize the effect of a disaster, you need three things: victims, heroes, and villains. He also says to really seal the deal and cement the effect, you need irony.”

“Irony? Who is this guy, my high school English teacher?”

“Hardly. Part of his irony is that the majority of your characters be dead and your villains be misinformed. Those were his words, not mine. We wrote this stuff off as insanity,
but if someone in Feno is setting off these bombs, it’s going to be hard to find many survivors.”

“But misinformed how? What does he mean by misinformed?”

“It was so crazy, Ellie, I didn’t pay that much attention,” Guy said. “He said you could manipulate certain types, put them where you needed them, make them believe anything to create any effect you wanted. He had profiles of who makes good villains—prone to rage, antisocial, substance abuse.”

“Shit, did he put my picture in there too?”

“That wasn’t all. There was another type—paranoid, gullible, obsessive. He said they made good visible targets, were easily coerced to make grand gestures and could be used—”

“Oh my God.” Ellie sat up straight. “Paranoid, gullible, and obsessive? Guy, they’re going to use Bing. I’ve got to get to the care center.”

She was halfway over the edge of the building before Guy caught her. He grabbed her arm and let it slip through his hands as she dropped onto a dumpster below. She heard him swear as he followed to the dumpster and then to the street, keeping step with her as she ran. How could she have been so stupid? Bing was totally paranoid and obsessed with Rachel. He’d do anything to keep her safe. Of course Feno would use him to trigger some kind of incident, or trip a bomb or something. Why else had they been allowed to just stroll out of the Feno compound?

“You can’t just charge into the care center.” Guy pulled her back, slowing her down. “Look.” Ahead they could see three Feno trucks parked before the care center. The power hadn’t gone out on this block, and light flooded the streets
where the doors were held open. “If you go running in there during a raid, you’re going to be detained, I assure you.”

“What are we going to do? I’ve got to get in there.”

Guy watched the guards evacuating the building. “You’re under arrest.”

“What?”

“Give me your hands.” She pulled her hands away, but Guy was faster. “If you’re already in my custody, they can’t take you.” He pulled a zip-tie restraint from his belt and wrapped it around her wrists loosely.

“Don’t bind my hands.”

“You can get them out. Just keep them together. Oh, and try to look pissed.”

She flipped her middle finger at him as he led her up the steps to the care center. Uniformed workers and patients filed out in crowded lines, hurried by Feno guards. Guy pushed through the throng, jerking Ellie along by the elbow. A young guard with a face full of freckles jumped to attention.

“Mr. Roman, what are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

Guy pushed Ellie to the side. “Everything under control?”

“Yes sir. We’re moving the personnel to the auditorium. Medical has been set up for the patients, but there’s nobody critical. Um,” he looked down the crowded hallway toward the treatment rooms, “the other team is here too. At the nurses’ station.”

Guy nodded and clapped the young man on the shoulder. “Good work.” He pulled Ellie along, shouldering through the people making their way out. Ellie tried to keep up.

“What other team?”

“This is an evacuation. If there’s another team, they’re arresting people.”

“Guy, that’s where Bing and Rachel were headed, down past the nurses’ station. That’s where the records were kept.” At the end of the hallway, where it branched off to the treatment rooms in which Rachel had received her detox, two armed guards stood ready. Guy dragged Ellie along, but when he went to move between them, one of the guards held out his arm.

“Sir, I can’t let you go through there.”

Guy turned on the guard with a sharp look. “You can and you will.”

“Sorry, sir.” The guard was much taller than Guy, but seemed cowed. “I have orders.”

“Yeah, I gave them.” He pulled Ellie between them. “Don’t let anyone pass.”

“Yes sir.”