Drift (33 page)

Then the lights came on. Everything got brighter, but it remained as colorless as the darkness—a dull, ugly grayish green. The walls, the plants, the pots of flowers, everything. Including me. My hand and my arm were the same color as everything else.

Before I could move, a muffled voice said, “Hold it right there, fuckhead.”

I turned to see one of the guys from outside, now wearing a white hazmat suit that looked blindingly bright compared to everything else in there. He approached with his assault rifle, maybe an M4, tucked under his arm and pointed at my middle.

Turning back, I saw Leo, the one Rupp had been arguing with in the trailer, approaching from the other direction in his own hazmat suit.

“Hands up,” the first guy said.

I thought about making a move, but decided against it. As I complied, I rubbed my thumb and fingers together. The grayish green powder felt greasy between them. My shirt and my pants were covered with the same stuff.

Leo came up behind me, gave me a quick pat down. As he took my gun and tucked it into his utility belt, Rupp appeared at the end of the row.

“Carrick?” he said with a smug look on his face. He wasn’t wearing a hazmat suit. He was holding a gun, maybe a .22. It looked heavy and unfamiliar in his hand. He laughed. “Jesus, look at you. You’ve got a dose on you that would kill an army.”

He walked past me, giving me a wide berth, and stopped at the standpipe next to where I had come in. Stooping without taking his eyes off me, he disconnected the hose from the overhead sprinkler system and turned the faucet on. A thick stream of water spurted out from the hose.

“I don’t know how many times I’m going to be able to keep saving your life,” he said as he put his thumb over the end of the hose and started spraying me. “Now, hold still.”

I recoiled when the cold water hit me, but I was relieved as well. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but the stuff he was rinsing off me had a bad vibe, and I was glad to be rid of it. For an instant I worried about my phone getting wet, but I remembered it was still in the truck, plugged in to the charger.

“We spend all this money on containment,” Rupp continued. “The negative air pressure, the chemical shower that’s ninety-nine point nine percent effective at killing the spores, all trying to make sure this stuff doesn’t somehow get out, and you come in like an idiot and cut a hole in the tent.”

The water running off me was cloudy and green.

Rupp lowered the hose. “Turn around.”

When I did, I found myself looking at Leo’s face through the faceplate of his hazmat suit. He had a sheen of sweat on his skin, and he seemed fidgety, like he was uncomfortable in the suit. I gave him a friendly smile as Rupp hosed off my back.

Leo kept his eyes on me but spoke out of the side of his mouth. “You know this guy?” he asked Rupp.

“Yes. He’s a cop,” Rupp replied.

Sometimes, when they find out you’re a cop, they’re a little scared, because they don’t want to get busted, and they know that people who mess around with cops tend to get caught. Sometimes they don’t care, because what they’re up to is so bad that killing a cop on top of it won’t make things much worse. Sometimes they’re happy, because some crazy bastards really don’t like cops, and they’re always looking for a chance to hurt one. This guy smiled.

“In fact,” Rupp continued, “this is the cop Mikhail was supposed to take out. You remember, when he didn’t come back?”

Leo shot Rupp a look. Then he turned back to me and his eyes narrowed. He took a step back, and his suit rustled as he tightened his grip on his M4.

I had a feeling he’d like me even less if he found Mikhail’s body.

“So, what brings you here, Carrick?” Rupp said, making a show of turning the hose off, cocky, like he was in control of the situation. “Just can’t seem to not be a cop, huh? Even when you know it could cost you your job.”

“I’d ask you the same thing, Rupp. Bit of a backwater for a hotshot like you.” I was trying to sound smug, but it wasn’t easy dripping wet. “Oh, that’s right,” I went on gamely. “You’re on your way to Paris, right? Except the head of the molecular biology department said you were an embarrassment to the field, and, what was it? Oh right, a guttersnipe, whatever that is.”

Rupp smiled, but his eyes were glaring at me.

“Yes, apparently, you’re not such a hotshot after all, since you got caught making stuff up.” I smiled. “Those award people
hate
that.”

“Carrick, you’re an idiot. Awards mean nothing to me. I do what I do for science.”

“For science?”

He shrugged. “And for money.”

“So, when I asked you about the apples, you said it would take an astonishing intellect. You were talking about yourself, right?”

He waved the comment away, modestly, as if I were the one saying it. “The apples are nothing. That was just for operating capital. And when you took out those degenerates, you were doing the world a favor.”

I thought of a few more favors I could do for the world, but I kept that to myself. “So, if it’s not about the apples, what’s it all about? The corn?”

“Kind of. It’s about Mycozene, a breakthrough in medicine. An antifungal cure for half a dozen minor plagues, and now one major one. The world should be grateful.”

Leo was trying to scratch his neck through the hazmat suit, but he stopped and exchanged a look with the other guy as Rupp prattled on.

“So, you genetically modified the corn to produce some synthetic chemical?”

“It’s not synthetic. It’s totally natural, just tweaked a little bit.”

“So, what’s this stuff, then?” I gestured to the green powder that coated everything inside the tent.

Rupp smiled. “This stuff? This is the major one. A little something I cooked up. A rhizopus—like bread mold, but much, much nastier. You should be grateful; we saved you from it once already.”

“Saved me, huh? And how did you do that?”

He smiled indulgently. “We dusted you after you broke in the first time.”

“You mean with the crop duster.…”

“That’s right. It sprayed you with the same stuff that’s in these.” He took out a small pill bottle and popped a capsule in his mouth. “Mycozene. It’s best if you take it by mouth, but it works on contact. You can even absorb it through the skin.”

When Pruitt had come to see me after the plane attack, I went outside in my bare feet. The next day my athlete’s foot was gone. And when Nola pulled all that moldy food out of the refrigerator, the next day the mold was gone.

“We sprayed the whole damn area.”

“And why would you do that?”

“Containment. We didn’t want things getting underway ahead of schedule. And we didn’t want things traced back to here. It’s a good thing for you, too, because otherwise you’d be dead.”

I looked around at the green powder coating everything. “So what’s the angle? What are you after?”

He laughed and shook his head. “There’s not much money in curing minor plagues. And geniuses have got to eat, too.” He shrugged. “That’s why I had to create a major plague. That’s where the money is.”

I think I could have gotten more out of him, and I was about to ask him what was up with the butterflies, but at that point they all turned to look toward the entrance.

67

He didn’t recognize me at first. But I recognized him.

Even without a hazmat suit on, he stood several inches taller than the others, with an air of authority that left no doubt he was in charge. He had the same metal as before: a row of studs through one eyebrow, a series of small hoops in one ear, a diamond in his nose, and something else in his bottom lip. His eyes looked dangerous, or maybe that was just because I knew better now. Levkov.

Leo stopped fidgeting, and he and his partner both stood up straighter. Rupp’s bravado evaporated, and he looked at the gun in his hand as though he had just been caught playing with his big brother’s favorite toy.

For a moment, the only sound was the ventilation system and the water still dripping off me.

“Who the fuck is this?” Levkov asked, glancing at me, then looking back, recognition in his eyes and a slight smile stretching his mouth. He walked over to Rupp. “What’s going on here?”

“That’s Carrick,” Rupp told him. “The cop. The one Mikhail was supposed to—”

Levkov’s hand shot out and slapped Rupp across the face—not hard, but a bracing blow that rang throughout the tent. My own cheek tingled at the memory of a similar blow. Rupp froze, shocked. The butterflies responded to the sound, wings twitching and fluttering.

“Fuck you!” Rupp squealed. “You can’t hit me. Don’t forget whose operation this is. This is
my
operation.”

Levkov snatched the gun out of Rupp’s hand. “What have you told him?”

“I … I … nothing.” Rupp put his hand up to his face. He closed his mouth.

Levkov looked over at Leo. “Was he talking?”

Leo nodded slightly, adjusting the hazmat hood so he could see Levkov better. “Just like with the fucking Mexicans.”

Without hesitation, Levkov raised the gun a couple of inches and shot Rupp in the thigh.

A thick glob of blood spurted out of Rupp’s leg and he screamed and stumbled backward, crashing against a large steel cabinet and collapsing onto a pile of sacks of potting soil. Several of the butterflies took flight.

Levkov pointed the gun at Rupp’s chest, and two things went through my head: First, that if I didn’t do something, Levkov would kill Rupp. And second, if Levkov killed Rupp, I was next.

While Leo was adjusting his hood again, I drove my elbow into his throat and ducked behind him. Even as I locked one arm around Leo’s neck, Levkov and the other guy started firing. I could feel the bullets hitting Leo as I pulled him backward on his heels. My wet feet slipped on the floor, and I dragged Leo behind me for cover. The bullets from the handgun wouldn’t penetrate the body, but I hoped the M4 wasn’t firing jacketed rounds. Leo struggled at first, trying to get his feet under him, but after a few hits, he went slack. I found the trigger of Leo’s rifle with my free hand and squeezed it blindly.

Butterflies filled the air with fluttering wings, thickening the gray-green haze of spores drifting in the fans’ currents. By the time I reached the far end of the tent, the return fire had faltered. My feet skidded in the dust as I turned the corner, and I paused behind a row of tables, dropping Leo to the floor, dead. I pulled my gun out of his belt, and kept his, too. When I straightened up, I saw that Levkov had returned with reinforcements and a belt-fed machine gun, maybe an M60. I suppressed a shudder, thinking back to how he had handled me when he was unarmed. I reminded myself I wasn’t scared of him.

At least four bad guys were in the tent now, not counting Rupp. Two of them were coming toward me down the row. I had to resist the urge to set the gun to automatic, but the memory of running out of bullets was fresh in my mind. I aimed carefully and squeezed off two shots—
boom, boom
—and took them both down. Then I started back down the row, toward the front of the tent. The air was so full of dust and butterflies, I almost tripped over one of the men I had just shot.

I had made it halfway to the front of the tent when two new gunmen appeared at the far end. Apparently, they were unconcerned about their ammunition supply, because they seemed to have no qualms about firing on automatic.

Bullets zipped through the air, tearing through the butterflies and sending bits and pieces of them floating to the ground like dirty snow. I dove into a gap in the row of tables and returned a few shots, first down one aisle, then down the other. The spores stuck to my damp skin. A plague, Rupp had called it. I tried not to think about it, but without much success. I wiped my hands on my wet jeans, leaving a grayish smudge.

During a lull in the shooting, I heard a quiet voice calling my name. “Carrick,” it said faintly. It was Rupp, crumpled against the steel cabinet. His legs were splayed out in front of him, his feet sticking out into the aisle. I looked over at him but didn’t reply.

“Am I dying?” he asked.

He sat in a pool of the blood that seeped from his thigh and from another hole that had appeared in his side.

“Looks like it, yeah.”

“Fuck,” he rasped.

I fired once again down each row. In response, I got two single shots from the two guys on one side and a sustained stream of mayhem from Levkov’s gun. It shredded plants, tore through the wooden tables, and disintegrated countless butterflies.

Rupp touched a finger to the hole in his side. “I don’t want to die.”

I ducked down as another swarm of bullets screamed overhead. “Tell me what the fuck is going on here,” I told him. “And I’ll see what I can do for you.”

I could tell just by looking what I could do for him: not much. But he didn’t need to know that.

I glimpsed Levkov through the foliage, and I took a shot but missed. He returned fire with another barrage. The tip of Rupp’s boot exploded into shreds. He whimpered, but it sounded like fear not pain. Seeing him cowering behind the steel cabinet, though, I realized his position was better than mine. I darted across the aisle to where he was sitting. Grabbing his pant leg, I pulled his feet out of the line of fire.

He reached into the outside pocket of his jacket, took out a bottle of pills, and shook a capsule into his hand. “Here,” he said, holding it up to me.

I looked at it, then at him.

“Take it,” he said. “Hosing you off isn’t enough. Take the pill, and it’ll protect you for two days. Otherwise, with the dose you got, you’re a dead man.”

When I hesitated still, he rolled his eye and took it himself. Then he shook out another one and held it up with one hand while the other hand returned the bottle to his jacket.

I didn’t trust Rupp, but the green spores scared me more than any pill. My hands were still damp, and now they were coated in a thin layer of green. I wiped my finger off on Rupp’s jacket before taking the capsule from him. As I swallowed it, I caught a glimpse of Levkov and took a few shots.

When it was quiet again, I could hear Rupp rambling on. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or to himself. “You know, I grew up not far from here. An awkward adolescence.” A brief wistful smile twisted into a grimace. Then his eyes turned dark. “I hate this fucking place, almost as much as I hate these fucking people.”