Running With The Horde (Book 2): Delusions of Monsters (3 page)

              The revelation that Dick, the stranger, had somehow cleared his calendar instantly sapped Muddy’s anger away, replacing it with cold fear
.
Who in the hell was this man?

              “Senator, in all seriousness, I do appreciate your time. I brought you here to start what I hope is a mutually beneficial relationship. You came all the way down here, on your night off of all things, so I do hope you will hear me out,” he paused and Muddy nodded once, quite unsure where this was leading. “I represent some powerful interests that would very much like for you to author a new piece of legislation we intend to push through to law,” he winked.

              Muddy started to rise, as far as he was concerned this meeting was over, “Sorry, Dick, the senate isn’t some kind of a-la carte buffet and I don’t serve outside interests.”

              “Of course not, Senator, you serve your own interests and that’s why you are going do exactly as I say,” Dick said.

              “What are you talking about?” Muddy demanded.

              “How badly do you want to be president, Senator Brown?” Dick asked softly.

              “What?” Muddy sat back down as Dick suddenly had his undivided attention.

              “Are you familiar with the carrot and the stick approach?” Dick asked with a sad smile. “Well, the people I represent are prepared to offer you both, Senator.”

              “Stop talking in riddles, jackass, and just say what you mean.”

              “Well, the carrot is obviously the next presidency of our fair nation. I know you are on the short list. I know you think you could make a strong showing. But what I am talking about is a guarantee you will win.”

              “That’s not possible,” Muddy said, but looking into Dick’s eyes he found no deception in them.

              “You know better than that, Muddy. All things are possible. And before you ask, it’s not important who I represent. You will find out in due time. Just know that you are going to author and drive a bill for us. A bill that’s going to become law. Believe me when I say we can make that happen but we want you to be the face of it.”

“What kind of bill?” Muddy asked, not sure he really wanted to know.

              “You will get details when you need them, just know it’s going to change not only the country but the entire world,” Dick said in an ominous tone. Muddy looked at him in alarm. “Relax, Senator, I’m mostly fucking with you.”

              “Why me?”

              “Well for one thing you are good at what you do, landslide victories in all of your runs, Minority Leader at your age! It’s all so impressive!

“That’s why we want you, Muddy. It’s all about window dressing. Someone of your ilk ought to know that by this point in your career. It’s about making sure the people feel safe but not collectively strangled while we make a few important changes to the way we handle domestic security.” Dick took a long sip of his diet root beer while Muddy tried to process what the man was telling him.

“Of course on one hand it really doesn’t matter. The group I represent hold all the cards. If they want to make changes, then changes get made. But on the other hand if all the sheep in the world ever truly realized that all power is supplied by them. By their belief and by their inaction, then we’d have a real mess on our hands,” Dick said. His tone was serious almost like a preacher delivering a sermon he’d rehearsed a few hundred times. “So it’s important we continue to make the public feel good. Pat them on the back sometimes, shame them sometimes, that’s where you come in, Senator. The people trust you and that’s a credit both to your ability to deliver on your word and your acting skills. You’ll make a fine a president someday, that’s why we choose you.

              “I would never be a puppet,” Muddy snapped.

              Dick gave him that insufferable smile again as he added, “Haven’t you ever wondered why some of your very talented colleagues seem to struggle pushing half of the legislation you do through the senate?

Muddy’s nerves tingled through his body like fire crackers as Dick’s words assaulted his lifelong perception of reality.

“Has it ever dawned on you that you have a fantastic homerun to strikeout ratio when it comes to getting shit done in Washington?” Dick continued.

Muddy’s stomach started doing somersaults and he thought he might vomit. Truth was, he hadn’t really ever thought too hard about it. He just thought he was a great politician. Maybe even the next Kennedy.

“Hey, bud, don’t look so glum. This is how the world works. We are all puppets to someone. The only difference is who pulls our strings. You aren’t the first and you won’t be the last. Look at the bright side, soon you’ll be President of the United States! If that doesn’t start a party in your pants, I don’t know what will,” Dick said, laughing at his own joke.

              Muddy tried to center himself as he considered the idea his entire political career had been preordained. He finally brought himself back to the present and said, “You say you can make sure the bill passes. How exactly can you do that?”

              “Don’t worry your pretty little head about the details, Muddy, that will all be taken care of.”

              Muddy considered this information for a moment, thinking again he should just get up and leave. “Um, you said something about a stick?”

              “Ah yes, my friend, I almost forgot,” he slid the manila envelope across the table. “These are yours I believe.”

              Muddy didn’t want to open the folder but felt compelled to. He had to lick his shaky finger twice before he could grab the top flap and ease it open. What he saw inside made his jaw drop. The images in the small stack of high resolution photos were impossible so at first his mind refused to compute what he was looking at but eventually he understood. With that acceptance came the realization that everything about Dick and the mysterious group he represented had to be real.

              The photos depicted a scene from almost 20 years ago while he was in college on a regretful once-in-a-lifetime trip to Mexico during spring break. His buddies had left him alone in their cheap resort hotel room to sleep off a hangover. Eventually, he made it down to the hotel bar and that’s where he met her, his one mistake. He had known right away she was a prostitute but in that moment of his carefully orchestrated life he didn’t care. He brought her back to his hotel room and released several years of youthful tension over the course of an hour. He paid her and she left. He never saw her again. He hadn’t even thought about her. Until now.

              He hadn’t really been anybody at the time. Just a kid with some serious drive, aspirations and a few connections. He didn’t remember any cameras being in the room but from the images in the folder it appeared a full professional photo shoot had been conducted replete with clear images of his genitalia, not to mention a variety sex acts of which he was the star. If the photos were ever leaked, his career would be finished. The American people would forgive many things but not seeing a close up of a candidate’s penis. Senator Muddy Brown would be a laughing stock.

              “Better close your mouth before you catch flies,” Dick quipped. “You can keep those, we’ve got more.” Muddy shut the folder and pressed it tightly to his chest as he rose to leave. “Yeah, that’s fine, you go ahead and go. We’ll be in touch. In any case I think we’ve reached an understanding. You can have it all or lose everything, it’s really that simple.”

              Muddy was halfway out the door when Dick added one more ominous detail that made him freeze. “By the way, I know you didn’t ask but if you were wondering whatever happened to your date that night, let’s just say there is a certain cold case regarding a body recovered from a drainage gulch not too far from that resort you stayed in. You’d be amazed what they can do with DNA these days.”

              Muddy ran.

              As fast as his legs could carry him down the hallway toward the supper club. Behind him he could hear Dick laughing. Muddy imagined that’s what the devil sounded like when souls tried escaping from Hell.

The Past

Dr. Andrew Penrod was bored out of his mind and growing sleepy in the plush office chair. He hated these briefings and could never understand why he was required to attend. They were in Dr. Reynolds’s workshop with his small army of assistants bustling about the high-tech equipment in preparation for the show. Dick was barking orders at the cowering crew of audio and visual technicians making sure the feed was ready to go live to the members of the damn mysterious Syndicate who would be joining remotely. Everything had to be perfect when their overseers were watching.

“Are you ready, Dr. Reynolds?” Dick asked.

“Ready as we’ll ever be, Dick,” John said, using his fingers to bring some order to his unruly mop of brown hair. He had one of those perpetually youthful faces. It didn’t matter what his actual age was; it would always look like he had just finished high school.

“This will be just like the last few times,” Dick said, “You will not hear or see the Syndicate but trust me they will be watching. Just go on and give your presentation as though you were giving it only to the people in the room. For those of you in attendance, if you have an intelligent sounding question please don’t hesitate to ask just do your best not to throw John under the bus. You all know how stressful it is when we have remote visitors.”

“We are a captive audience,” Andrew said, “I am really confused why they won’t show themselves to us. It’s not like we can go anywhere.”

Dick sighed like he’d addressed this issue a thousand times before, “Dr. Penrod, as I’ve explained several times, at some point you and everyone else here will be going home. The Syndicate operates this way so when you do go home they can retain their anonymity.”

Andrew shrugged but didn’t say anything else. He had voiced his complaint; it was all he could do. He wasn’t an idiot; he knew they were never going home. Perhaps the Syndicate planned for all contingencies, like five eggheads somehow escaping a highly secure underground facility in the desert and then surviving on foot with no water to the nearest town. The town would naturally be filled with reporters from all over the world waiting to take their statements. Andrew giggled quietly but then stifled it when he caught a dirty look from Savannah seated across from him.

Dick nodded at John who had gathered himself in the front of the room. John waved to one of his assistants to bring over the first item. It was about the size of a bowler hat and the shape of an undercover police car siren.

“Our first item,” John said, “is the Sonic Barrier Device or SBD for short. While it has taken a long time to reverse engineer this tech from the ship, we are happy to report we finally completed a functioning prototype two months ago. We believe our guest in the other room would have used the device like a failsafe if he lost control of the ship. It would have effectively shut the ship down.

Our modified version will serve a similar purpose. This would be considered a contingency response in the event we lost control of the infected populous for whatever reason. It could be placed on a vehicle roof or dashboard and plugged into the lighter socket. As long as the vehicle had juice in the battery, the vehicle’s occupants would be able to move unmolested through large crowds.”

Andrew raised his hand to lob a softball question to John, “Do you have any idea what effect the SBD would have on a human being?”

“Great question, Dr. Penrod, we haven’t tested it on humans yet simply because we have no human subjects. However, we have tested it on the infected rats you gave us. They were already quite sick because the virus is still too aggressive so we can’t say definitively but we do believe the SBD causes severe but temporary nausea and disorientation. I have a high degree of confidence the effects would be similar in humans.”

Andrew zoned out after he asked his obligatory question. None of this garbage mattered anyway until Andrew and his team perfected the virus. They were close but not quite there yet. He was in no real hurry, he seemed to be the only person in the facility that worried what would happen when the Syndicate got what they wanted. With the exception of John and Savannah, all these people were goddamn lunatics as far as he was concerned.

His mood was growing darker as the presentation dragged on. He was only halfway listening as John was elucidating about a nasty looking device about the shape of a USB drive but with tiny dagger-tip where the plug-in port should have been. “…if injected we believe it would give the carrier complete control over the populous within that person’s immediate area. Essentially, the wishes of the controller would be the command of the infected people. In much the same way the pilot controlled his ship but on a much larger scale.”

“What would the range be for this controller person?” Savannah asked.

“I will remind everyone, um, in the room, that this is all still purely theoretical and we are nowhere near completion. We won’t know for sure until we can test it in the pilot cities. That said, I have full confidence it will perform as designed. Basically it will operate on an extremely powerful Wi-Fi signal large enough to cover a major U.S. city and the surrounding areas.”

“What about infected people outside the range? Or if the controller is sleeping or not actively sending out commands?” Dick asked.

“Again, this is nothing more than an informed assumption but we believe in those situations the infected people would behave as they do naturally. Those people would represent the mean, of course, with outliers on both ends. Some could become catatonic while others would think they are losing their minds and likely behave rather erratically.”

“How many of these devices did you make?”

“Currently we have four, one each for the pilot cities but once we work out any bugs from testing we will be able to produce as many as the Syndicate requires.”

Andrew had enough. He stood to his feet with his hands on his hips in his best interpretation of an angry stance. “Are you people crazy? We can’t do this! This is lunacy!” He spun and raised his eyes to the black-domed camera poking out of the ceiling and pointed a finger at it, “And you! Syndicate!” he screamed, “You hide in the shadows and use Dick to spew your vile threats, I don’t even thi-“

That was as far as he got with his tirade before Dick clamped an arm around his throat and Andrew couldn’t breathe. “Looks like it’s naptime for little Andy,” Dick whispered harshly into his ear as he choked him out. “Hope you enjoyed your moment in the sun, you little dildo. When you wake up I am gonna have Todd skull fuck you.”

Off to his left he heard Todd’s insane, high-pitched giggle. The man was clearly delighted to see Andrew humiliated at the hands of Dick, the all-powerful warden of their prison
.
God, he fucking hated Todd
!
That little tidbit was Andrew’s last thought before he passed out to his usual cavalcade of nightmares.

Sometime later he awoke in his chair alone in the conference room with a massive headache. Dick and the guards had gone as were the rest of Andrew’s colleagues. Likely they were all back at their workstations. He understood the endless pull of the work they were doing. Stuff the rest of the scientific community could only imagine. He used to feel that otherworldly excitement when working on the project. There was always more work, more intrigue, and more breakthroughs to make with the find. That was why they were chosen. They were scientists with bottomless pits of curiosity. Perhaps at the cost of their own humanity.

He groaned, stood and stretched the kinks from his back. He ached from too many years hunched over a keyboard or a microscope. Then he left the conference room and headed to his private quarters. He peeled off his clothes and sat down on his easy chair with only his underpants on. Andrew stabbed the power button on his TV remote and hit play on the DVD. The episode of
Diagnosis Murder
popped on right where he’d left off the night before. He grabbed his crochet materials from the end table and resumed work on his current project. He was making yet another blanket. He knew the security cameras were watching him but he stopped caring about them years ago. This was how he decompressed. It was his only connection to the life he once knew. Andrew had pinned all of his hopes on these endless piles of yarn and had done so for years. It was all he could do.

…

He had been a rising star in the scientific community. This was years ago. He could have done anything he wanted. He could have made a difference. Instead, he met Dick and accidently sold his soul to the devil.

The American Scientific Festival had been in full swing in San Diego that year. Dr. Andrew Penrod, with his doctorate certification still drying in its frame had been manning a booth for his new employer, the Global Genome Institute. It had been a busy couple of days at the expo and Andrew was enjoying some downtime in the hotel bar hoping he might run into a few of those science groupies he was always hearing about but had yet to lay eyes on himself.

One hour and two strawberry margaritas later, he was still sitting alone and getting ready to call it a night when a man, perhaps a decade or so older than himself, took the barstool next to him and asked if he wouldn’t be interested in staying for another round, on him of course. Andrew eyeballed the man. He seemed harmless enough with his dad jeans an
d
“
I’d rather be fishing
”
tee-shirt. He had no problem having a conversation with the guy and he would never turn down a free drink. Dr. Penrod was brilliant and like so many others that brilliance made him very lonely.

“Sure,” he said. “But just one, I have an early call at the expo in the morning.”

“Completely understand,” the man said with a grin as he waved the bartender over. “Strawberry margarita, right, Dr. Penrod?” Then he gave the bartender the number two sign with his fingers.

“Do I know you?” Dr. Penrod asked with a frown, his buzz was making his head fuzzy.

“No, you don’t but let’s rectify that. My name is Dick,” the man said and leaned closer for a handshake.

Andrew looked down at the hand and then shook it, still confused. “Nice to meet you, Dick, how did you know my name?”

“Oh, I know all about you, Dr. Penrod. You are quite an impressive young man.”

“Thanks, I guess.” Andrew was painfully shy and was never graceful when it came to accepting compliments.

The bartender returned with the fresh drinks. Dick raised his glass in a toast, “To new friends.”

Andrew, still confused, raised his glass as well and they sipped their drinks. “I would hardly call you a friend, we’ve only just met. I assume you want something from me?”

“Straight to the point then. Good! My kind of guy,” Dick said and slapped Andrew on the back slightly harder than was friendly causing Andrew to spill a bit of his margarita.

“So what is it?” Andrew asked, wiping up the spill with his cocktail napkin.

“I have a proposition for you.”

“Oh, I, um. I’m not-”

Dick laughed and slapped him on the back again, “Relax, Dr. Penrod, you’re not really my type anyway. No, my proposition is of the professional nature, related to your field of expertise.”

“I see,” Andrew said, feeling a bit foolish for his assumption. “Sorry to disappoint you but I am quite happy with GGI. Besides, I’ve only just started and I’m under contract.”

Dick turned his attention to his drink with a concerned frown and said, “I figured you would say that, Andrew. Is it okay I call you that? Yes, I can see why you’d be happy being an errand boy for that group. It’s got to be fulfilling to endure all those years of study to spend your time educating prepubescent boys and girls at an expo booth.”

“That’s only temporary,” Andrew snapped back. “Anyway, that’s how things work. You have to work your way up to bigger and better things. I respect that.”

“Shit, I don’t,” Dick replied. “You are far too talented to waste even a minute trying to prove yourself. Your paper on the mutation properties of the common cold virus is evidence of that.”

“You read my paper?” Andrew asked with a hint of pride.

“That and everything else you’ve ever written. Your piece on the theoretical uses of nanotechnology was breathtaking. I told you, I know all about you.”

“Who did you say you worked for?”

“I didn’t and I am not going to tell you that, especially if you don’t even want to hear me out.”

“Okay, say that I do want to hear you out.”

“Then we’ll have a conversation.”

“Okay,” said Andrew.

“Okay, what?” Dick asked.

“Let’s have a conversation,” Andrew said.

“Not here.”

“Where, then?”

Dick sighed and shrugged his shoulders apologetically, “It would require a plane ride. But listen, before you say no, I am authorized to give you ten thousand dollars just to listen. You will be back by midday tomorrow. That’s all I can say for now until you commit.”

“But I have the expo.”

“You say you’re coming with me and that’s all taken care of.”

“But you can’t even tell me where we are going?”

“Not at this time.”

“How do I know you aren’t going to abduct me?”

Dick chuckled, “I guess you don’t.”