The Soul Collectors (6 page)

1:08.

Wrapping her right arm around the back of the man’s legs, she stood, screaming in pain, her lungs and chest burning. She grabbed the shotgun with her free hand.

58 seconds.

Her head pounded, and it hurt to breathe, and now her stomach was roiling from the exertion of carrying the man down the stairs. Darby stepped over the broken front door lying on the floor and raised the shotgun as she moved past the doorframe, coming to a sharp and sudden stop on the steps outside.

10

The Manny Ramirez-looking SWAT officer who’d had no problem admiring her boobs was lying on his back on the walkway.

Darby saw the man’s still, unblinking eyes. They stared up at the tree branches shaking in the wind. Vomit splattered the walkway and it covered the front of his tactical vest, his gloved hands and shirtsleeves.

More vomit-covered bodies were sprawled across the street. Some had been stripped of their tactical vests and jackets. Some wore gas masks. Those that did had pulled them aside to throw up before passing out and dying.

Darby whisked past the SWAT officer lying on the walkway and saw a thick, white frothy mixture bubbling from his mouth and dribbling down his chin and cheeks.

Has to be some kind of poison, but what kind – and how the hell did it get inside the APC? How could –

A flash of movement across the street and she raised the shotgun.

A SWAT officer stumbled across the neighbour’s front lawn, his gloved hands clawing at his throat. Over the rustling branches she could hear him gasping for air.

He vomited and then collapsed on the grass, starting to crawl.

Not poison – whatever it is, it’s airborne.

Nerve gas?

40 seconds.

Darby reached the back doors of the APC. Inside she found two more of Trent’s team slumped against the floor and wall, the same white foam covering their mouths. One man was still alive. Barely. He blinked dully at her as she dumped the prisoner in the back.

She didn’t have time to secure his wrists. She swung the heavy doors shut and secured the handles with a pair of Flexicuffs.

35 seconds.

Darby opened the driver’s side door and found the APC driver slumped against the wheel. He had been shot in the head. She grabbed the man’s blood-soaked jacket collar and yanked him out of his seat.

Seated behind the wheel and with the door shut, she slammed her foot on the gas. The APC jerked forward, the Bear, as Trent had called it, picking up speed.

Trent. The SWAT senior corporal hadn’t spoken to her over her earpiece – only the hostage negotiator, Lee. She remembered hearing him coughing and now, nothing, not a single word from either man. Were they dead? Had anyone survived?

‘This is Darby McCormick. Anyone listening, I order you to stay away from the Rizzo home. I repeat,
stay away from the Rizzo home
. SWAT team is dead, exposed to some sort of nerve gas. I have no idea what chemical was used or how long it takes to dissipate – it could still be lingering in the air. Call and warn the local hospitals to prepare their decontamination units.’

Her earpiece remained quiet.

She had to call 911, tell the dispatcher what had happened and alert all units to stay clear of the area – they needed to be warned before their men walked into a chemically hazardous situation. The same held true for area hospitals. Victims exposed to the gas would rush through the emergency room doors complaining of nausea and difficulty breathing. They needed to be decontaminated before receiving treatment. And if hospital personnel weren’t dressed in hazmat gear, they too would be risking exposure.

To use the phone now, she’d have to take off her gas mask. She’d be exposing herself, and if this shit was lingering –

You’ve already been exposed. It’s clinging to your clothes and your skin right now.

A new thought occurred to her: her prisoner wasn’t wearing a gas mask. She had locked him in the back with the other sick officers and right now he was breathing in whatever had killed them. She’d have to find a place to decontaminate him.

The blockade came into a sharper view. The cruiser lights were still on, pulsing bright blue and white flashes, and the first person she saw was a patrolman slumped against a cruiser’s front bumper. Scattered across the ground was a tangle of arms and legs wrapped in jeans and jackets – detectives and possibly some of the residents who had ventured outside their homes. No movement. No movement at all.

Dead, they’re all –

A loud bone-crushing
boom
of thunder rumbled through her chest as the house exploded behind her, lighting up the dark, starless sky.

11

Tearing down the road, Darby spotted a house glowing with lights. The homeowner, an elderly man dressed in light blue flannel pyjamas, stood in his bare feet on the brightly lit front steps of his tiny ranch home, a dazed but alarmed expression on his wrinkled and craggy face as he stared down the dark street, looking in the direction of the explosion.

His gaze turned frightened when the APC came to a jarring stop near his lawn. Darby stepped out with the shotgun, catching sight of the fire blazing no more than a mile away, thick smoke blowing through the woods, over the tops of the tall pines.

Gripping a wrought-iron banister, the elderly man cautiously made his way down his front steps. ‘What’s in blue blazes is going on?’ he barked. ‘My wife and I were sleeping when we heard all these police sirens, and now I just heard –’

‘Stay right where you are, sir, don’t come any closer. What’s your name?’

‘Arthur Anderson.’

‘Mr Anderson, I’m ordering you to go back into your house. I want you to make sure your windows are sealed shut. Do you understand?’

A fearful nod as he licked his lips. ‘I understand what you said, but I don’t –’

‘
Listen to me
. I need you to get inside your house right now, no questions. Then I want you to get on the phone and tell all your neighbours to stay inside their homes and make sure their windows are sealed shut. Do it now. You got a hose out here?’

He pointed to the west side of the house. ‘Water’s still on, I haven’t turned it off yet.’

‘Get me a bucket and a scrub brush and a bottle of dish soap. Throw it out on the front lawn. Get moving.’

After 9/11, Boston police started to carry decontamination kits in their squad cars. Darby rooted around the front of the APC, searching all the console compartments, even under the seat. No decon kits – just a First-Aid box attached to the wall behind the driver’s seat. She opened it. The supplies inside weren’t ideal, but she’d have to make do until the proper equipment arrived. She grabbed what she needed and ran to the lawn.

She ripped open several packages of gauze pads, set them up on the grass and doused them with alcohol.

She wiped down her cell phone first, then her gloves. She threw the used pads to the side, then took off her gas mask and used the remaining pads to scrub down her face, mouth and ears until they burned. She called 911, cutting off the female dispatcher who answered.

‘My name is Darby McCormick. Don’t talk, just listen. Senior Corporal Gary Trent of SWAT summoned me earlier this evening to a home in Dover.’ She quickly gave the woman the address and said, ‘Do you have a list of area fire departments?’

‘People have called about a fire, so engines are already en route to –’

‘You need to warn them about a possible chemical attack. They are
not
to approach the bombsite unless they have gas masks with military-grade filters. Make sure whatever hazmat gear they’re using has a Biosafety Level 4 rating. Now repeat back what I just said.’

‘Hazmat suits,’ she said, her voice cracking over the words. She was clearly in over her head. ‘Masks with military filters.’

‘Bio
safety
Level 4 rating. If they don’t have that equipment, they’re not to approach the bombsite under any circumstances. I have no idea what chemical agents were used. Your job is to limit the contamination as much as possible. After you call the fire departments, get on the horn to all the area hospitals. Have them seal the front and emergency-room doors to give their people time to access their hazmat gear. Tell them they’re looking for victims showing signs of nausea and difficulty breathing, foaming at the mouth.’

A pause, and then the woman said, ‘Are you saying there’s been some sort of biological attack?’

‘That’s
exactly
what I’m saying. The hospital staff will know what to do, they’ve all had training.’

‘Okay. Okay, I’ll call them right –’

‘Hold on. I also want you to make sure that you have people guarding the shooting victim – the guy the EMTs picked up from the front bushes of the Rizzo home. What’s his status?’

‘He’s gone,’ the dispatcher said.

‘He died?’

‘No. I mean, I don’t know. The ambulance never showed up at the hospital.’

Darby glanced over her shoulders at the APC’s back doors, listening to the woman’s frantic tone. ‘Union Hospital called and told us. They’ve had no contact with the ambulance in question. We sent out a patrol but haven’t heard back from them. I also informed Senior Corporal Trent of the development and we haven’t heard from him either – we haven’t heard from anyone except residents calling about a fire and what they think was some sort of explosion.’

‘What local agency do you call in case of bio-attack?’

‘We, ah … I, I don’t know, we haven’t ever faced –’

‘Where’s your emergency protocol sheet?’

Darby heard shuffling of papers, things being moved.

‘Where’s the nearest army base?’

‘We don’t have one stationed here any more,’ the dispatcher said.

‘What about the Pease base in Portsmouth? The air force still has someone stationed there – they could mobilize one of their Air Mobility Command Units to –’

‘They’ve been shut down. Budget cuts. And the hospitals in the area, I know for a fact they’re not equipped to deal with multiple contaminated patients. Maybe two or three at a time, that’s it, but if it’s something as large as you’re saying, we’ll –’

‘Boston University has a new Biological Agent Research Lab,’ Darby said. ‘They have people equipped to handle this, and you’ll need trained people here anyway to identify the type of gas or chemicals used. They’re in the South End, about an hour away. I’ll make the call and brief them. Call the fire department first, then the hospitals.’

Darby hung up without giving her cell number – no need since her number had been captured on the dispatcher’s computer system.

At the beginning of the year, BU had opened their brand-new 1.6 billion-dollar research lab, courtesy of funding from former president Bush’s Project BioShield, created to increase the US’s response to bio-terrorism. The BU lab had a Biosafety Level 4 rating, the highest security classification, as it dealt with the world’s most infectious and incurable pathogens. It also had, in conjunction with the army, a specialized Crisis Response Unit that could respond to any biological attack or catastrophe on the East Coast.

The public didn’t know about the unit, but police and federal law enforcement agencies did. Every Boston cop and lab technician had been given the hotline number with strict orders to programme it into their cell phones. Her temporary suspension had forced her to turn over her badge and laminated ID card that gave her access to almost every area inside the Boston police department. She’d also had to turn over her beeper but not her work cell. She found the hotline number quickly.

The man who answered the phone identified himself as Sergeant-Major Glick. Darby gave her name and then explained who she was and what had happened in New Hampshire. She told him about the number of dead SWAT and police officers and Glick asked her several in-depth questions about the symptoms.

Glick said, ‘Are you showing any symptoms?’

‘Not yet.’

‘The person you captured, where is he right now?’

‘In the back of the APC.’

‘With the other dead officers,’ Glick added.

‘I didn’t have much of a choice.’

‘Understood, but you need to decontaminate him quickly.’

‘I haven’t found any decon kits, so I’m going to scrub him down the old-fashioned way, with soap and water.’

‘Scrub yourself down while you’re at it. If he tells you what gas was used, it will save us some valuable time. We may be able to treat on site. Otherwise, we’ll have to wait for blood analysis.’

‘He’ll tell me,’ she said and hung up.

After she shoved the phone in her pocket, Darby put on the gas mask and then moved to the back of the APC, sliding the tactical knife out from underneath her sleeve.

12

A quick jerk of the sharp blade and Darby cut the Flexicuffs binding the APC’s door handles. She opened the doors and backed up, bringing up the shotgun.

Her prisoner, still wrapped in the net, had managed to push himself up into a sitting position. In the process he had somehow worked the gas mask back over his mouth, what little good it did him. He had already breathed in the tear gas, the chemicals coating the soft, sensitive membranes lining his lungs, throat and sinuses. His chest heaved as he hacked into the mask, trying to expel the fire.

Darby stepped inside. In the dim interior light she could see his mottled face, his bloodshot and watery eyes. They tracked her as she knelt next to the SWAT officer who had been barely conscious earlier. Now he was slumped against the floor in a puddle of vomit, a white, frothy mixture covering his lips and bubbling from his nose and mouth.

She pressed a gloved finger against the man’s neck.

No pulse.

She grabbed the prisoner by the back of his collar. He didn’t put up a fight or struggle, too weak and disoriented from the tear gas and the blows to his head. She lifted him easily to his feet and marched him to the opened doors. When he reached the edge, she shoved him outside.

His hands jerked up to try to cushion the fall. They got caught in the sticky webbing and he slammed sideways against the ground, the sharp, painful cry lost in his coughing fits.