After he was finished in the cafeteria, Nate returned to his office and began reading e-mails and filling out the stack of paperwork in his in-box.
He only stopped when the screaming started.
He sat back in his desk and stared at the wall. Listening to the sounds. The shouts, the weeping, the shrieks. Then, later, alarms. And finally, gunfire.
At 9:19 he got up from his desk, closed his laptop, opened his office door, and walked out into the hall. His assistant, Miriam, was standing by her desk, eyes wide, her clothes torn, her scalp glistening red in places where she’d torn out handfuls of her hair. If she recognized him it did not register on her face.
Down the hall, one of the junior lab technicians was slowly removing his clothes, folding each piece, and placing them on a neat little stack. He’d begun with his shoes and now wore only a shirt and tie. His penis was fully erect and he was singing an old Backstreet Boys song. His lab partner, a short Indian woman, lay sprawled at his feet with half a dozen pens and pencils buried in her eye sockets. She still breathed, but shallowly, and her body twitched and shuddered, heels rapping an artless tattoo on the carpet.
Nate Cross walked past them, and past a dozen other employees. Some alive, some dead. One of them was on fire, seated at her desk, flesh melting, hair blazing, eyes wild. When she opened her mouth, flames rushed in.
The fire alarms went off and a moment later the sprinklers kicked in, twitching and pulsing as they sprayed water over everything. Nate ignored it as he walked the length of the building to the office of the senior virologist, Dr. Shaw.
Dr. Shaw had swept everything off of her desk and was copulating madly with a male temp half her age. Her hands were locked around the temp’s throat and as she screamed herself into an orgasm she crushed his windpipe. The temp had made absolutely no attempt to resist her.
Nate watched a moment. Dr. Shaw was wrinkled and fat and ugly. He picked up a wooden chair, hefted it, and very quietly and efficiently beat her to death. Then he took her keycard, which provided access to parts of the building that were off-limits to anyone but the most senior research staff. He took the stairs down to the high-security floor, using the keycard at every point, entered the lab, and went to the hot room. The lab staff was gone, but there were splashes of blood, broken equipment, feces, and torn pieces of lab coats everywhere. Nate used Dr. Shaw’s keycard to open the hot room.
When he left the building five minutes later, the fire companies and police cars were screaming into the parking lot. Nate walked to his car, opened the trunk, removed a commercial Blade 350 QX3AP quadcopter drone that he had bought from Ace Hardware, opened a small metal container that he’d installed where a camera was usually affixed, placed sixty-five vials inside the container, sealed it, started the drone, and let it fly.
A policeman saw it rise and came running over, yelling, his gun already in his hand. Nate Cross watched the drone go up and then saw the shift in vector as the drone’s controls were taken over by someone else. The drone rose and turned and vanished into the morning sky as the police officer wrestled Nate to the ground.
INTERLUDE NINETEEN
The heat from the burning building chased them all the way to the fence.
The two of them were flash-burned, dazed, caught off guard by the intensity of the blast. The school itself was dark, though, except for the fire. The God Machine had consumed the lights, the power, the alarms.
Despite the pain of the burns, King and Prospero laughed as they ran.
Behind them there were shouts. Yells. The deep-throated barks of the pursuing dogs.
When they reached the wall, King pushed Prospero up, steadied him, helped him climb, shoved him over into the bushes on the other side.
King was nearly to the top himself when he lost his footing. His sneaker slipped out of the toehold in the chain link. King wailed as he plunged backward.
The sound he made as he fell was horrible. Like a wet stick breaking.
“No!” screamed Prospero as he lunged toward the fence to climb back.
The dogs were coming. Four of them. Big shepherds racing far ahead of the guards.
“R — run…,” gasped King. He flapped one arm to wave Prospero away. “Go…”
Then his arm and head fell backward as the dogs swarmed in.
Prospero screamed.
And screamed.
And he ran.
The gates opened.
The dogs ran so much faster.
But the fire ran faster still.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“Give it to me without the candy coating,” I said.
Church frowned. “You’ve been gravely ill, Captain. How sure are you that jumping back in is the best call?”
My answer was a glare that boiled a few degrees above nuclear.
“Fair enough. Where would you like to start?” he asked. “Gateway?”
“No, Houston. How many of our teams are on the ground? Where are we with the investigation? I want to head out there as soon as we’re done here.”
Church shook his head. “It’s under investigation. No one has taken credit, though ISIL is at the top of the list of likely suspects. The president convened a special task force that is currently being headed up by Harcourt Bolton. We are assisting as needed.”
I shot to my feet. “Whoa, wait a goddamn minute… we’re assisting? Since when are we anyone’s water boys? I mean, even for Bolton.”
“It’s fair to say that POTUS is less enthusiastic about the DMS than I’d like.”
“Why? Because of Gateway? I already told you I made a judgment call and—”
“No, Captain, Gateway is significant, but a number of our recent cases have had unfortunate outcomes.”
I slumped down into my chair. “First I’m hearing about it.”
“It’s been a busy week while you’ve been out of it.” Church tapped crumbs off his cookie. “I don’t much subscribe to ‘luck,’ but this has had the earmarks of a losing streak. Gateway is just one of several instances of coming out on the wrong side of a critical play.”
I held up my hand. “Oh, really? And how exactly is Gateway an example of us dropping the ball? All that weird stuff that happened down there? Those clones or whatever they were? That machine? And the city? You saw the videos, man, you saw the photos, you have all of our field telemetry. What do you think was going on down there?”
“Captain,” he said slowly, “there was absolutely nothing stored on any of your cameras. There was no telemetry from the body cams. There is not one shred of evidence to support what you claim to have witnessed.”
I stared at him in open-mouthed shock. “What the hell are you talking about? We documented everything. Everything.”
“It appears,” said Church, “that all of the data has been wiped.”
“Wiped? No,” I said, rebelling at the thought. “No, no, no. No way. How’s that even possible?”
“I had your verbal report following your departure from Gateway,” he said. “Since their recovery, First Sergeant Sims and Master Sergeant Rabbit have prepared extensive and detailed after-action reports. All three of you said there was a power outage of some kind, so it’s possible, however unlikely, that this is our culprit.”
“It hit us like an EMP,” I said, searching my memories. “Knocked everything out, even the flashlights. But then the electronics rebooted without signs of damage. Doesn’t that ring a bell? You want to tell me the president doesn’t think that’s somehow connected to Houston? Or the NASCAR thing? Or the damn presidential debate?”