Darkness Falls, page 25
The wheel turned a few inches and a narrow stream of reddish sludge shot from the pipe, arcing nearly thirty feet in the air before spattering across the building's far wall. After the initial movement, the valve loosened and soon the stream was pounding the wall hard enough to dent it. The onslaught sounded like a huge waterfall, but it wasn't loud enough to cover up the distant explosions as Canadian Air Command planes set fire to the forest around them.
They jumped off the pipe, both slipping and splashing down into the sludge. Jenna struggled to her feet and wiped her eyes, only to see Teague pulling desperately on his chain as his creation flooded around his ankles.
He shouted noiselessly at her and she took a hesitant step toward him, but Erin grabbed her and pulled her in the direction of the glow coming through the hole in the side of the building.
Outside, the smoke was already thick, driven by the predawn winds. She put her arm in front of her face and breathed through the fabric of her sleeve, but it didn't help. Erin kept pulling her along, but soon slowed and finally stopped when he realized what she already knew -- there was nowhere to go. She turned in a slow circle, watching the flames dancing across the tops of the trees and the fighter jets continuing to fire their rockets at a distance calculated not to send the bacteria into the air.
When she finally came back around to Erin, she saw the flames reflected in his eyes and knew that she'd finally done it. She'd finally killed him.
"It would have been so much better for you if we'd never met."
She couldn't tell if he was smiling or if it was just a trick of the shimmering light.
"After spending the last two years mourning you and the next ten minutes waiting to catch on fire, you'd think I'd feel that way.
But I don't. As insane as this sounds, I still think my life was better with you than without you."
The smoke between them was becoming increasingly tangible and she moved in closer, sliding her arms around him. There wasn't much more time. She was already feeling dizzy from lack of oxygen.
"I want you to know something," she started, but fell silent.
"What?"
A shadow in the smoke that she'd taken for a hallucination became more and more defined as it came up behind Erin. It almost looked like . . .
"Hey!" Mark Beamon shouted. "I hate to spoil the moment, but if you follow me there's still a chance we might make it out of here."
EPILOGUE:
Erin Neal tilted his face into the New Mexico sun and closed his eyes for a moment, causing his bicycle to arc lazily toward the edge of the empty road. The sky was a perfect uniform blue and the air was cool and still. He'd almost forgotten there could be days like this.
After he and Jenna had escaped being burned alive in Canada, he'd stayed on for a while -- spending seven months living in freezing cold tents and metal sheds, doing unimaginably horrible things to the earth. No procedure for dumping toxic chemicals on pristine wilderness had been ignored he'd used helicopters, tanker trucks, fire-suppression planes. There had even been some talk of blimps until they'd discovered they didn't do well in those kinds of crosswinds. In the end, he'd single-handedly created an ecological disaster area that would have made even the Soviets cringe.
Now the world was playing a waiting game, spending billions testing soil, air, and groundwater for even the slightest trace of Teague's bacteria. If, in a few years, none had been found, the Canadians would team up with the U. S. and Europe to begin the multi-trillion-dollar project of removing God knew how many cubic yards of dirt and safely disposing of it. How that was going to be accomplished no one was quite sure.
Erin stood on the pedals and propelled the bicycle up a hill that opened into a sweeping view of the massive research complex at the end of the road. Small houses topped with solar panels dotted the desert around it, connected by a web of narrow dirt streets. The price of oil had settled at about four hundred and fifty dollars per barrel, making paving economically unviable unless it was absolutely necessary.
In the distance, he could see their resident farmer running his tractor across a field that provided much of the food for the two hundred and fifty or so people who worked there. It had been a battle to get that done the government still liked* to throw money around for no reason while waxing rhapsodic about nonexistent security concerns -- but in the end it was much more economical than transporting all their food in with gas at twelve dollars per gallon.
His little agricultural project was just one example of myriad changes the world had undergone in the past year and a half. Of course, there was the initial panic when it had sunk in that the forty percent reduction in world oil production was going to be more or less permanent. That was the way it always went, though. It was human nature to be absolutely certain that every deviation from the status quo was a sign of the apocalypse. But it was also human nature to adapt when those changes became inevitable.
After years of becoming increasingly smaller, the world seemed to explode in size almost overnight. Most of the airlines were gone now that a coach ticket overseas cost a third of the average American's substantially diminished salary. Imports and exports had pretty much dried up as well, and military adventurism on any scale was no longer tolerated by voters now painfully aware of just how much fuel a little skirmish abroad could suck up.
And so the United States had turned inward, going back to local manufacturing and food production, creating new technologies for conservation, and focusing more and more on electricity generated from coal and nuclear. The economy was finally starting to stabilize, though it was clear that it would do so at a substantially lower level. Many stores were open only three days a week now, and the skyrocketing number of people telecommuting had caused a massive crash in commercial real estate and the auto manufacturing business. Ford and GM were just now getting back on their feet -- with substantial government help -- refocusing their business on catching up with Toyota in electric-vehicle technology.
Although life had changed for everyone, people actually seemed grateful that they had enough to eat and a roof over their head. The glass is half empty sentiment that seemed to have taken hold in America was gone and people realized that things could be a lot worse. Even the media had done an about-face -- focusing on stories about can-do people and technological successes instead of sensationalizing the worst humanity had to offer.
Erin coasted down the back of the hill, weaving from side to side to keep *his speed below the point where his lunch would blow out of the basket secured to his handlebars. In front of him, a chain-link gate began to open and a guard in crisp fatigues held up a hand in greeting.
"Nice weather, huh, Doc?"
He smiled as he pedaled by. "You've got the best job in town today, George."
Erin ignored the nearly full bike rack, gliding through a set of automatic glass doors and across the building's lobby -- one of the very few benefits of being in charge. Most of the people around him were only vaguely familiar despite his best efforts to put names with faces, and he was forced to surreptitiously read their name tags when returning their greetings.
Jenna had always been in charge of that -- using her nearly photographic memory to keep him out of trouble at conferences and presentations. Whenever someone he swore he'd never seen before walked up to them, she'd smile and say "Bill! We haven't seen you since Buenos Aires!" Or "Susan! Last time we saw you, you were eight months pregnant! How is little Max?"
But she wasn't here now. She'd been whisked out of Canada the day after the fire and he hadn't seen or heard from her since.
Mark Beamon had assured him and continued to assure him during their heated weekly conversations -- that she was fine and that he was doing everything he could for her.
That had worked for a few months, but Erin's anger and frustration had finally exploded and he'd made it clear in one of those conversations that if Jenna didn't reappear in a hurry, he was going to walk.
Beamon, whose droopy-dog sincerity could be shockingly reassuring, convinced him that it wasn't time yet to play that card. But now, after many more months of silence, it was getting to be time to act on his threat.
He was still the world expert on this type of biological attack, and they desperately needed him to direct the research into a way to counteract Teague's bacteria, should it resurface. But that might not always be the case. It was impossible to know when some kid twice as smart as him would suddenly appear out of MIT's basement, or the government would relax enough to put some congressman's brother in his chair. He needed to spend his political currency while it was still good.
Erin coasted into an empty elevator, turning his bike in a well-practiced maneuver that allowed him to push the button for his floor without getting off. When the doors opened again, he pedaled out into the hallway, but then came skidding to a halt when Mark Beamon appeared from a bathroom.
"I take it that since you're running the place, you don't see any reason to set your alarm," he said, wiping his damp hands on his slacks.
All their communication had been via phone or email since Beamon and Jenna had left Canada together. Why was he here? Traveling from D. C. to New Mexico wasn't exactly trivial anymore -- even for the government.
"Erin? You alright?"
"You look good," Erin said, managing to shake off his surprise but sounding stupid anyway. It was a true statement, though. Beamon's hair had continued to thin, but his eyes were clear and his tan skin hung tighter to his cheekbones than last time they'd seen each other.
Erin had received an invitation to Beamon's wedding a while back, though there was no way he could get away to attend. Instead, he'd commissioned a local D. C. artist to sculpt an enormous fountain with cherubs peeing into a pool. Not cheap, but what did you give a man who had everything?
"Marriage seems to agree with you."
"I can't complain. Thanks for the fountain, by the way. Gives my backyard a little class."
They both fell silent, just standing there, looking at each other. There was little doubt this visit was about Jenna, but Erin wasn't sure he wanted to hear what Beamon had to say. What if something had happened to her? What if they'd decided that after what she'd done, she was never going to see the light of day again? What if Beamon had been lying to him and they'd put her somewhere like the place they'd sent him? What if---
"Do you have any coffee?" Beamon said finally.
"Yeah, sure. There's a pot in my office."
Beamon looked around admiringly as he followed. "Quite a spread you have here. They tell me you run a whole city."
"It's more of a town," Erin said, still finding it impossible to bring up Jenna as his stomach slowly tied itself in knots. "You know, just the employees. And there's a town council that handles most of the details."
His secretary glanced up from her computer as they walked in and tapped a calendar on her desk. "You've got a congressional oversight teleconference in two hours, Erin. Do you have all your budget numbers together?"
He shook his head absently and reached for the knob to his office door. He couldn't avoid the conversation forever. "So why are you here, Mark. Where is --"
Jenna pushed herself off his couch as he entered, an uncomfortable smile spreading across her face. "You wouldn't know where a biologist could get a job around here, would you?"
Her eyes were a little glassy as she crossed the office and threw her arms around him.
For a moment he couldn't speak, suddenly realizing that he'd never really believed he'd ever touch her again.
"Are you . . . are you okay? Where have you been?"
"Prison," she said.
He stared furiously at Beamon, who had passed by them and sat down behind the desk that dominated the room.
"Oh, don't look at me like that. Get her to tell you about it."
"It wasn't that bad."
"Not that bad?" Beamon said. "It had goddamned tennis courts."
"It did," she admitted, taking Erin's hand and leading him to the sofa. "Mark came and visited me every couple of weeks."
"Does this mean you're out? You're free?"
He looked over at Beamon. "Is that what this means?"
He grinned as he opened the desk's drawers and examined their contents. "It turns out that the government's thirst for blood was satisfied by the gruesome deaths of Teague and his German friends -- particularly the fact that Teague drowned in his own creation. Even a congressman isn't too dense to see the poetry in that."
"Do you know for a fact he drowned?"
"No, but it makes a great story," Beamon and Jenna said in unison and then both laughed.
"There's also a general feeling that you need to be kept happy," Beamon continued. "And then, of course, Jenna can be a lot more valuable here than working on her net game in prison."
"Here?" Erin said, still unable to fully process what he was being told. "You're going to stay here?" He'd never even dared to consider that. His best-case scenario had been to walk off the job and negotiate a comfortable spot for Jenna on some desert island in return for toiling his life away in New Mexico. This seemed too good to be true.
Beamon crossed the room and Jenna stood to give him a grateful hug. He shook Erin's hand and headed for the door, but stopped before he reached it.
"Don't ever do anything like this again, okay?"
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Kyle Mills, Darkness Falls
