Ill Wind (38 page)

In the center of the crowd a master sergeant stood on several overturned crates stenciled with the words “Hatch Green Chiles.” According to the schedule, down on Central Avenue another enlisted man would be making similar pronouncements.

The sergeant raised his arms for quiet,
then
recited the familiar speech. “Under martial law, absolutely no breach of security will be tolerated. Without radio or TV, we don’t have the means to broadcast this order to the public, so everyone needs to make darn sure their neighbors get the word. At the moment we are unable to print this information for wide distribution.

“Until such time as that becomes feasible, every day at—” The sergeant looked down at a sheet of paper listing intersections and times, “thirteen thirty, that’s one thirty in the afternoon, we will hold announcements right here in this intersection. We will also distribute food, water, and medical supplies for those in need. But listen carefully—because of the large number of people under our protection, we will have only one hour to accomplish these tasks.”

A low rumble ran through the crowd. The sergeant held up a hand. “Just a minute—I’m not finished!”

When the crowd did not immediately fall silent, one of the security officers fired his rifle up in the air. The sergeant looked around,
then
continued.

“Several new laws have been established. The most important is that a curfew will be in place from sundown to sunup. Because we have no electrical power in the city, it is difficult to provide protection for everyone at night. By order of President Mayeaux, Brigadier General Bayclock, the base commander of Kirtland, has assumed command during this interim period of martial law. Mayor Reinski fully endorses these measures and strongly encourages all citizens to cooperate.”

The master sergeant looked over the crowd. “We’re here to help you. Until things return to working order, we’re all in this together, and we have to do the best we can.”

Satisfied that the exchange was under control, General Bayclock pulled back on the reins of his horse. The gelding backed up a few paces,
then
wheeled around.

Bayclock faced Mayor Reinski, who quietly watched the exchange. “The next few days are going to be critical—we’ve got to use an iron hand.”

The young mayor seemed to have lost weight; his eyes were red, encircled by dark rings. Reinski did not respond.

Bayclock snorted, half inclined to ignore the mayor, but he realized the importance of appearances, even during times of martial law. “I’m heading back to the base, moving my headquarters to the more secure Manzano mountain complex, and I advise you to come with me. Not everyone agrees with what we’re doing, and I won’t be able to protect you unless you’re under my charge. I have doubled security at the base.”

Reinski spoke in a low voice. “Aren’t you going a bit overboard, General?”

Anger flashed through Bayclock’s body like a snapped rubber band. “Maybe you don’t remember your history, Mr. Mayor, but the most effective military bastions live as a symbol of threat, especially in times like these. Remember the Bastille.”

Reinski merely pressed his lips together. The sounds of the uneasy crowd caused Bayclock to twist around in his saddle. When the security policemen shoved several people to the ground, loud shouts erupted. One man reached up, flailing to protect himself. Above the shouting, the master sergeant waved his arms and tried to bring the crowd under control. Slowly the people at the edge of the crowd started to disperse, defusing a potential riot.

Bayclock turned back to Reinski. “This is going to have to continue until we make an example of someone. These people have to get it through their heads them just how serious we are.”

Chapter 50

Still filled with hellfire-and-damnation from the previous night’s rally and the march up the abandoned freeway, Jake Torgens and the mob arrived at the Oilstar refinery demanding vengeance—but the guards had already abandoned the front gate of the refinery complex.

Jake glared through the dusty glass of the empty guard shack. One of the windows had fallen in, and only a metal-springed skeleton of a chair waited to greet them. Jake was disappointed to meet no resistance.

Many times in the past, the Oilstar security officers had calmly met them at the fences, while Jake and his protesters engaged in “nonviolent civil disobedience”—all perfectly mannered, like a high tea.

But they had vowed not to stop at mere passive resistance this time. Civilized protests were for normal times—not when the country was falling apart. From now on there would be no armbands signalling which demonstrators wanted to be arrested, no waving placards in front of TV cameras. This wasn’t a show; it was survival.

“Inside!” Jake waved his arm forward like a commander ordering his troops. “This place is ours now!” He clutched the chain-link fence as others flowed past carrying sticks and crowbars. He had pulled most of the crowd from angry people on the streets, the ones who wanted to strike out because they had already lost their future. It would solve nothing, but at least the symbol of evil would be removed.

Jake raised his fist in the air. The gesture rippled through the crowd, a mark of solidarity. Jake Torgens could have stopped the entire petroplague disaster from happening if he had taken extreme measures in the first place. It was his greatest failure.

He had been at the Oilstar town meeting, one of the loudest voices opposed to the spraying of Prometheus. He had managed to get a temporary restraining order from Judge Steinberg—and with his network Jake could have filed appeal after appeal to stall the cursed spraying forever. He had held the court order in his own hands while his people stormed the Oilstar pier, waving it and demanding that the helicopter land and
obey
the law. The
Law!
But the helicopter had sprayed the deadly microbe anyway.

Now the whole planet was paying for it.

Curses erupted around him. Jake drew in a monumental breath and shouted, “Burn Oilstar to the ground!”

The refinery complex was a nightmare of fractionating towers, piping, valves, ladders, and catwalks. Small white Cushman carts sat abandoned next to enormous metal contraptions. The admin building and research facilities stood in the center of the complex, like an oasis surrounded by the industrial no-man’s-land.

Huge natural gas, crude oil, and gasoline storage tanks rested on the sides of the hills, great metal reservoirs closed off by metal caps. No doubt some of them still held viable fuel—it would have been a precious commodity if the petroplague continued to devour only octane, but with other long-chain polymers falling to pieces, no engine culd still function even if it did have uncontaminated fuel.

But the gas could still burn.
Oh yes
, Jake thought,
it would still burn.

#

Inside the bioremediation wing of the Oilstar complex, Mitch Stone stared helplessly at the scrawled notes in front of him. He had used a metal bar to break open the locked drawers of Alex Kramer’s desk, ransacking the original lab books and notes the microbiologist had left behind. The official data and quarterly reports had already been copied and sent to the plague research centers around the country, but there had to be more. Mitch went straight to the source. There had to be more!

“Dammit, Alex! Are you doing this to me on purpose?”

Mitch stared at the handwritten comments. Kramer’s computer—nothing but warped circuit boards, wires, and glass CRT—sat on the desk. The diskettes lay dissolved in unrecognizable piles. But Mitch knew that the old-timer kept actual logbooks. Mitch had teased Alex about it before, but now he blessed the old man for his prehistoric ways.

As he flipped through the pages and stared at the data, despair poured through him. He held the lined paper up to the light from the window. The other pane in Alex’s office had fallen out, dropping three stories to shatter on the ground below. Wind whistled into the room.

Emma Branson paced in front of the desk, waiting for him to answer her. “Stone, are you even more incompetent than I thought? We’ve got to give them something! You were involved in this from square one, don’t you remember anything?”

Helpless, Mitch wanted to shrug and make some excuse, but Branson looked ready to claw his eyes out. She would see right through any patronizing explanations. “I was involved with it, but . . . but I worked mainly on the management end of things. I attended the meetings and took care of public relations. Alex was the one doing the work!” He swallowed, realizing how stupid he sounded. He ran a hand through his itchy hair; he hadn’t had a trim in over a month.

“That’s not the way you made it appear in your reports,” Branson said with ice in her voice.

Mitch averted his eyes and looked again at the scrawled data. It took a while, but once he recognized the pattern, he felt too sick and embarrassed even to point it out to Emma Branson.

“Well, what is it?” she demanded.

“Uh, it appears that Dr. Kramer faked his data. He wrote incorrect results in his notebooks.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

Mitch jabbed his finger at the columns of numbers. She could see it for herself. The figures were simply placeholders, taking up space; Kramer had jotted down the square root of two, pi, and others. Branson’s eyes widened, and Mitch wondered if she was going to fly into a rage or break down and cry.

Before she could react, the sound of an exploding natural gas tank shook the room. The
thwump
came first, loud enough to rattle the other window in Kramer’s office. Booms echoed around the refinery complex.

Branson dropped the notebook and pushed toward the window. “What the hell is going on out there?” she said.

Outside, a towering ball of blue-orange flames roiled to the sky. Flaming, molten shards of metal clattered to the ground. One of the fractionating towers buckled from the explosion.

A crowd roared below. Tiny forms, people, scrambled on the gasoline reservoirs and the crude oil storage tanks. Were they going to burn those, too?

“Son of a bitch! Peasants bearing torches, can you believe it?” Branson said. “Come on, we’ve got to get back to the Admin building. I’ve still got my own private guards there.”

Flustered, Mitch said, “Yes, Ma’am.”

He followed, leaving Alex’s doors open. Gunshots rang out as Branson’s guards responded to the assault, but their guns fired only a few times before the weapons seized up. The shouts grew louder.

Before he and Branson made it down the three flights of stairs, they heard breaking glass below. “Oh, shit!” Mitch’s voice wavered.

Branson looked ready to dive into the fray herself and start tearing the saboteurs limb from limb. “Up the stairwell. We’ll go to the second floor and down the back. Maybe we can get out the emergency exit.”

Mitch ran after her, pursued by the sounds of smashing and yelling. When they reached the other stairwell and hurried down, the bottom door burst open. Four people charged in.

Mitch froze, hoping the intruders wouldn’t look up. But his luck didn’t hold. One of the women glanced up the stairs, spotting both of them. Her face ignited with glee. “There they are! Two of them!”

Mitch whirled and scrambled up the stairs, leaving Branson behind. The old woman came panting after him.

Mitch’s mind whirled. He had seen plenty of those stupid suspense movies where the victims continued to run up the stairs while being chased. But what other choice did they have? The people were below, swarming up.

“Floor four,” he said. “There’s the vault! I think it’s open—I cracked it this morning to get at Alex’s records. If we get in there, they’ll never be able to reach us.”

Branson stumbled beside him. Below, the attackers had reached the second-floor landing.

By the time he got to the fourth floor, Mitch had gained a good lead on Branson. He ran down the corridors, ducked through an open typing-pool complex of dissolving cubicles, toward the document vault in back. The heavy steel door stood partway open.

He glanced behind him and saw Branson turning the corner, her arms outstretched, gasping. Her hair had come undone, and she had flung off both shoes as she stuttered forward. Fewer than ten steps behind
her,
came the roaring mob.

 
Mitch ducked into the vault; a dim, battery-powered emergency lamp flickered from the ceiling. If he waited for Branson, he would never get the heavy steel door closed before the others wrenched it out of his hands. He couldn’t hesitate. He tugged at the handle and hauled the door closed, digging his feet into the floor.

Emma Branson reached the vault just as it shut. She screamed at him through the tiny gap before the pursuers grabbed her shoulders. Mitch jerked the vault door closed with the last of his strength. The combination would reset itself automatically, and none of these people would ever get inside. He heard muffled screaming, but he could make out no words.

He didn’t want to know what was happening to Emma Branson.

Mitch slid down the back wall and sat in the corner, spilling confidential documents marked PROMETHEUS around him as he shivered uncontrollably. Finally, he began to laugh as he realized that he was safe. He had found the papers.