Impetus (14 page)

CHAPTER
16
 

Robert led King and Clyde up the small hill on the outskirts of the city. They passed through a sagging chain-link fence at its top. King had chosen to keep this an intimate affair. No need to gather his troops for a show of force. Not yet. Plus, he did not need to hear any bellyaching about them being tired or cold. Poor babies. Maybe Mick would see it King’s way from the start. At least that is what he hoped. For Mick’s sake.

“
Where did he go from here?” King asked Robert.

“
Over there,” Robert said, pointing to a building ahead of them, hugged between a series of smaller mound-like hills. He then nodded to the roof of the building to where Greg watched out over the exact space they needed to cover.

“
All right,” King said. “Stay close. Let’s see how this goes. No one is to shoot unless I say so. Is that understood?”

Robert nodded. Clyde said nothing.

King then smacked Clyde in the head, a move that was turning into his modus operandi. “Did you hear me?”

“
Yeah,” Clyde said, rubbing his head. “Sorry.”

T
he small group of men made their way from the fence toward the shelter.

A
loud banging broke the breezy silence from above them.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

King looked up at Greg on the roof. He had a rifle in one hand. And with the other hand he beat twice more on the air conduit.

“
We have company,” Greg shouted into the vent, loud enough to carry on the wind. Greg then leveled his rifle against his shoulder and said, “Hold it right there, fellas.”

King
motioned for his men to stop. “Hello up there,” he said. “We come in peace.” King had always wanted to say that. But the right opportunity hadn’t presented itself until that point.

“
If you come peacefully, why the guns?” Greg asked.

“
Have you roamed the city recently, stranger? Traveling without protection is nothing short of suicide.”

“
Well, you won’t need them here,” Greg said. “Not unless you give us reason to think otherwise. So why don’t you go ahead and put them at your feet.” Greg eyed them all while keeping the rifle pointed at King.

“
I’m afraid we can’t do that right now,” King said.
Or ever
, he thought. But his true feelings would expose the person beneath the mask. And the play had only just begun. “You are the one pointing the gun at us. How do I know you mean us no harm?”

“
You don’t,” Greg said. “But I didn’t walk up on your home. So I’m the one doing the asking. If you come in peace like you say you do, then disarming shouldn’t be too much to ask.”

“
Maybe peace was the wrong choice of words,” King shouted, inching closer as he spoke.

“
Then what is the right word?” Greg asked, cocking the rifle. “Better hurry. My patience isn’t what it used to be.”

The door to the shelter opened
, and Mick made his way outside. His rifle was at the ready the instant he exited the door.

“
Ah,” King said. “Good to see you again. Mick, was it?” Unlike Solomon, King always remembered a name. But he liked to keep others guessing. Make them speak more than they would have chosen to. Play the quiet fool while others lived it.

Mick inched clo
ser over broken glass that crunched as he walked. “What are you doing here?”

“
Come now, Mick,” King said. “Is common decency really no more? Can’t one person come to speak with another without all this unnecessary suspicion?” He laughed inside as he said it. It was fun to play someone that he was not.

“
When it comes to you and me, yes, common decency is dead,” Mick said. “You’re not my type of people.”

King made a shocked face, like he could not believe what Mick had just said.
“Oh, Mick,” he said. “Why must you hurt my feelings like that?”

“
No offense,” Mick said. “But I’m not buying it. You and feelings are like oil and water. And you have no place here. So why don’t you turn around and go back to where you came from.”

“
Like I told your friend up there,” King said, looking up at Greg. “We came to talk. Nothing more.”

“
I can’t see what we possibly have to talk about.”

“
I have a proposition for you, Mick. Something I offer to a few rare people. How would you, and whoever is here with you, like to be a part of my kingdom?” King smiled confidently. There had yet to be anyone he crossed that could not be persuaded to join his ranks, one way or another. His kingdom was the pinnacle of the new world. In King’s mind there was only one correct answer to that question.

“
You’re serious?” Mick said with the slightest snicker. “What would make you think I’d ever take you up on that
offer
?”

King
’s expression went from cockiness to anger in an instant.

Insignificant fool.

“Why would you think I was anything but serious, Mick?” Just like at the yellow house, King let the hard
k
drip off his tongue with animosity.

“
I find it difficult to take you seriously,” Mick said. “I mean, you did dub yourself King of Boston.”

“
The Rubble King,” Clyde corrected, seeming pleased with himself.

“
Ah, right,” Mick said. He looked up toward the roof at Greg, who still had the rifle trained on King’s head. “Hear that, Greg? All hail the Rubble King.”

Greg laughed.

Clyde took a step forward, past King and closer to Mick.

“
Stop,” Greg said from the roof. “Your next warning will be a bullet through your skull.”

Clyde stopped and sneered at Greg. He then looked at Mick
, whose gun was also trained on him, before slowly slinking back.

“
He usually doesn’t miss,” Mick said.

Neither do I
, King thought, composing himself, suppressing the anger that normally would have burst free already. “Come now, Mick,” he said. He realized that he should have brought more men. Next time would be different. “At least give it some thought. I have food and water. I can offer you protection.”

Mick scoffed.
“Like the protection you gave to Solomon?”

“
Solomon is perfectly fine. I assure you. He is just as stupid and slow as when you met him the other day.”

Clyde and the rest of the men giggled at
King.

“
That’s funny,” Mick said. He looked directly at Clyde. “He seemed a lot more intelligent than the bunch of you. And we have everything we need right here. We don’t need you or your propositions.”

King
smiled to hide his growing anger. “Everything you need, huh? I wonder what else you have in there.” He looked over Mick’s shoulder toward the shelter.

Mick firmed up his grip on the rifle.
“No more questions. Our conversation is over. I suggest you leave now. And don’t come back. That way we won’t have a problem.”

T
he door to the shelter opened again.

“
Daddy?” Kathryn said.

“
Go back inside,” Mick shouted, looking quickly over his shoulder and then back to King.

“
Who is that?” Kathryn asked, seeming not to hear Mick’s shout. She squinted from inside the destroyed outer shell of the shelter.

“
Get inside, Kathryn. Now!”

“
Oh,” King said. “Lookie here, boys. Seems that our friend, Mick, has a daughter.” King eyed her up and down and then looked back at Mick. “She’s very pretty. She must take after her mother.” He looked over Mick’s shoulder again. “Come on over. We don’t bite.”
Much.

Clyde snickered in his crude way
. He then licked his slimy lips and tried to wink through his thick sports goggles, which just made his face contort in an even uglier manner than was the norm.

Mick inched forward.
“One more word,” he said. “Say one more word about my daughter, and it will be the final one you speak.”

King
held up his hands. “All right, Mick. But I really think you should give my offer some thought. I will only offer it this once. And it is more than I give to most.”

“
The answer is no,” Mick said. “It will always be no.”

King
’s face reddened. He clenched his jaw and looked at Mick and then Greg. “Very well,” he said. “I’m certain that we’ll be seeing each other again soon.”

“
Don’t come back here,” Mick said. “I mean it. You are not welcome here.”

King
simply smiled and waved for his men to follow him back down the hill. He would have to get what he wanted through less friendly means.

CHAPTER
17
 

The more Sid thought about it, the more he felt betrayed. Phillip used them like puppets. Building bits and pieces of the accelerant and then combining them without anyone knowing what his true intentions were. Phillip had told Sid that the molecular stability agent he’d designed was for longevity testing of the vegetables. Sid had never questioned that because it made sense at the time. The hydroponically grown vegetables would last much longer if their decay was stabilized. He felt naive now that Phillip’s true intentions were out in the open. It was all too apparent that his agent was specifically created for the blue gel, not the hydroponics. The clouds began to clear, and the truth shone down brightly. What irked Sid the most was that he’d had a hand in this. Unknowingly, of course, but he’d still played a part in Phillip’s game of God.

He hurried
down the white-walled main hallway, passing others going about their own business, surely unaware of what had been birthed in this very building. When he reached Phillip’s door, Sid instinctively knocked, but he entered before being told to do so.

Phillip looked up from the tablet in front of him.
“Sid?” he said. “Have you found something new?”

“
You could say that,” Sid replied, tossing down his own tablet in front of Phillip. On it played a video of what Sid had just recently found in the tiny lab. He watched as it replayed the CV-1 virus ramping up its attack after being dosed with the blue gel that Phillip had designed.

Phillip
also watched the screen. He then stood from his chair, never one to stay in a position of being looked down upon. “And this is?”

“
Don’t play coy with me, Phillip. This is what you sent to the outside population. Isn’t it?”

Phillip said nothing. He looked at the tablet again before gently tapping the red square to stop the video from playing.

“I knew this was not an inoculation. We all did.” Sid then flipped the tablet toward him and quickly started another video. This one showed the end result of what the accelerant did: a gathering of dead shriveled-raisin blood cells. “But I never in a million years would have envisioned you as a cold-blooded murderer.”

“
A murder?” Phillip scoffed. “How dare you! Who are you to judge me?”

“
I wouldn’t dare judge you, Phillip. I don’t think I could be harsh enough.” He paused for a moment, feeling himself heating up inside. His anger brewed. But it would do him more harm than good to lash out. Phillip could snap his fingers and have The Facility’s security team usher him into some dark corner of the building where few traveled. He understood the politics in play here, even without an official political structure present.

Phillip, too, calmed his demeanor.
He stopped and buttoned the bottom button of this lab coat, which had sprung loose when he’d shot from his chair. “Sit,” Phillip asked. He motioned toward the chair directly behind Sid. “Please. A shouting match will get us nowhere.”

Sid wanted to storm out of the office. He knew this was going nowhere. But he had just started something he wasn
’t sure he should have yet. So he reluctantly sat.

Phillip again looked at Sid
’s tablet as it sat paused on the final image in the video. Ten or so dead blood cells stood frozen in time. Each cell had a stringy black strand of the CV-1 virus surrounding the entirety of it.

“
It’s an accelerant. Isn’t it, Phillip?”

Phillip looked up from the screen.
“Yes. It is.” He offered no more.

“
Why would you do something like this? What happened to you over the years? Where’s the brilliant, ethical man I begged to come work for after the CDC?”

“
There are bigger things than my intelligence or sense of humanity at play here. What we face is new ground, uncharted territory. There is no time to plan clinical trials. There is no FDA or CDC. There is not a single entity out there that can help us achieve the goal that is imperative to our survival. There is, as far as we know, only us left to save the world. And sometimes our hands need to get dirtier than we would like. The ethics you speak of are long gone.”

“
Speak for your own ethics, Dr. Jones. Mine have not wavered.”

“
Oh?” Phillip said. “You can’t truly believe that?”

Sid thought for a moment.
Maybe he had not been honest with himself. He shook the thought away.
No.
That was what Phillip wanted him to feel. He knew he had begun his game of manipulation. And Sid had almost fallen for it.

“
I do believe that I have remained true to myself,” Sid said. “I have always questioned any method that went against the very principles that we live by. Who are you to trick these people into speeding up their own deaths? Under the guise of a helping hand nonetheless. I find it despicable.”

“
Your misplaced sense of moral obligation will do nothing but slow down our hunt for the cure.”

“
If one even exists, Phillip. We don’t know if it does. We don’t know if CV-1 can even be slowed down. It’s apparent that it can be sped up, though. Thanks to you.”

“
Thanks to us, I think you mean. You’re an intelligent man, Sid. By now I’m sure you have figured out that your stability agent was used to keep the gel intact prior to injection?”

“
I did,” Sid said. “And you can screw yourself for bringing my work into your demented game.”

“
I assure you, Doctor, this is no game. And I brought you into nothing. You knew before Impact what was needed of us. You fully understood the ramifications of living in The Facility. It was not me who brought you into this. You willingly came all on your own.”

Sid stood
from his chair. He balled his hands into fists to keep himself from doing something he would regret. He then walked to the large window that looked out from Phillip’s office and into the largest lab in The Facility. There was a team of technicians buzzing around like a swarm of bees gathering honey. Except the honey in this instance was a blue gel.

“
When I signed up for this assignment,” Sid said, “it was under extreme circumstances. The world was about to end as we knew it. You told me our job was to find a way to rebuild.”

“
What do you think we are doing, Sid?”

“
We are killing innocent people.”

“
That’s where you are wrong. We are not killing anyone. They are already dying. It is our job to try and fix that. And the only way to accomplish that is by finding the immunity strand.”

“
Not by any means necessary, Phillip.”

“
Yes. By any means necessary is exactly what we must do. Do you think the virus is playing by these rules you impose upon yourself? Does it stop and consider the moral obligations before infecting our planet? You already know the answers, Dr. Roth. You simply need to come down off your high horse and see the world for what it is and not what it was.”

Sid walked back from the window, slowly, thinking, before sitting back down on the chair. As much as he hated it, he realized that Phillip had a point. But having a point and being correct were ent
irely different things.

“
Why didn’t you tell us?” Sid asked.

“
Because, Sid, I knew that this would happen.” He fanned his arms out in front of him. “This whole battle of words we are having at the moment.”

“
Don’t play that game with me, Phillip. You had no right—”

“
I have every right,” Phillip interrupted. “I am in charge of this facility. I am the decision maker here. Not you or anyone else. Me. And only me.”

“
Says who, Phillip? The government that no longer exists? The military brass that hasn’t been seen or heard from in over six years? Who exactly is giving you the right to accelerate the deaths of these people?”

Phillip said nothing. He cocked his head a bit and removed his glasses, tossing them on his desk. He rub
bed his eyes. “Sid,” he said. “Listen, I respect your opinion—”

“
Do you?”

“
Let me finish,” Phillip said, furrowing his brow. “But while I respect your opinion, I am under no obligation to agree with it. Furthermore, without structure, the entire Initiative will fail. Then it won’t matter who did what, because we’ll all be dead. And who will you preach morality to then?”

Sid said nothing. He simply stewed in the words that Ph
illip had just hung in the air.

Phillip picked up his glasses and pushed them back onto his nose.
He reached over and picked up his tablet. After tapping a few digital buttons, he made a swiping motion and projected the tablet onto a television monitor that hung on the wall to his right. The screen showed a rough map of Boston’s old city blocks in green lines. Scattered throughout the map were blinking red dots.

Sid looked at the screen curiously. He said nothing, however. It was
still difficult for him not to storm out of the office. But he knew that would be exactly what Phillip wanted. He would not give him the satisfaction.

“
These dots,” Phillip said, “represent the targeted groups that have willingly taken the serum.”

“
Thinking it was for their own benefit, Phillip. You can pretty up a lie however you want. In the end it is what it is.”

“
Nothing is done for the individual in today’s world, Sid. You are well aware that we work towards a collective betterment.”

“
So tell these people the truth. Let them decide if they want to put the accelerant in their veins. That they’ll die so much quicker if they inject themselves. Then see how much better the collective feels with that knowledge.”

Phillip stared at Sid for a moment. Their eyes locked on each other. He then broke his stare and tapped another button on the tablet. This one magnified a certain area of the map. The
larger red blinking dots were replaced by several smaller blue dots, scattered in the same general area.

“
These smaller dots represent each person within those groups that has injected themselves. I took the liberty to include nanotracking bots in the injection device so we could monitor where the process was.”

Sid stared at the blinking dots. It then hit him that each dot represented a lie.
A lie that he’d unknowingly contributed to.

Phillip continued.
“If the infected person expires, the dot vanishes. If any dots remain in the next five or six days, then we may have found an individual with immunity to CV-1. And all of this will be forgotten.”

Sid closed his eyes in disgust. How could things get to this point so quickly? He then reached over the desk and tapped a button on the tablet. The screen went back to the full map of Boston. The red dots were scattered all over the map, but most of them were within a few miles of
The Facility. He noticed a large single green dot.

“
What is the green dot?” Sid asked.

Phillip looked to the monitor. After finding what Sid was referring to
, he said, “The green dot means it has yet to be used.”

“
Meaning they haven’t shot themselves up?”

“
Not yet, anyway. If the dot remains green much longer I will be forced to send one of our security teams out to do it for them. As you know, Sid, time is not our friend. We cannot wait too much longer.”

If Sid had any say in the matter,
that green dot would remain that way.