Population Zero (10 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Todd was completely covered in blood. He peeled his clothes off and walked upstairs. There were babies crying in a room down the hall. He had been too late to stop them from being born and he couldn't imagine himself taking the life of a fully developed child. Instead, Todd stepped into the bathroom mid-way down the hall and into the shower to wash the blood and tissue from his skin.

His mind was clouded by images of Stephanie, his mother sitting on the toilet with a hanger in her vagina pierced through the skull of what would have been his younger brother; Nicolene and the two girls down stairs with their guts laid open, and the big woman whose fetus he'd dragged out of her womb with his bare hands. Todd began to scream.

He screamed long and hard and sobbed as if the world had ended. He collapsed into the tub and huddled into a fetal position, still screaming, the shower, now cold, still spraying down on him. When he finally stopped screaming, he heard the front door open and one of the girls run out of the house screaming. Todd leapt up from the shower and ran through the house looking for the old man's room. He needed new clothes. He found some pants and a cardigan, slipped them on, stepped back into his bloody sneakers and sprinted down the stairs.

He didn't have his bike. He didn't have a car and the subway was several blocks away. When he stepped outside, Todd saw the large woman he'd bent over the sink banging on the door of a house across the street. Todd began to run. A car raced up the block and Todd ran as hard and as fast as he could. Still, the vehicle caught up with him and slowed down, keeping pace with his stride.

"Todd!"

He turned and was surprised to see his supervisor, Ms. Santiago, sitting behind the wheel of her Saturn hybrid, waving him toward her car. Todd slowed down, panting hard but looking at her suspiciously.

"Elizabeth? Wh-? Wa-? What? What are you doing? What are you doing here?"

She opened her passenger side door.

"Your ex-girlfriend lived. The cops are looking for you everywhere. Get in. I'll take you to the airport." She held up a plane ticket.

Todd walked over to her car.

"Why are you doing this? You know what I've done?"

Elizabeth Santiago smiled, that same bemused expression she'd had when the cops had come to the job to question him.

"I'm just throwing a starfish back into the ocean."

Todd got into the car. He sat in the passenger seat looking at her, bewildered and surprised.

"Zero Population?"

"Of course. And I've got another surprise for you."

Chapter Twenty-Two

"How soon can I go to the airport? I'm kinda freakin' out just sittin' here."

Todd whispered into the cell phone Elizabeth had given him, nervously looking around the room as if he expected a SWAT team to come crashing through the wall at any moment.

"Your flight doesn't leave until morning. You don't want to just hang around at the airport all night. That might not be safe."

Todd sat on the bed in the dingy airport hotel rocking back and forth and sweating despite the air conditioning. His only comfort was that Elizabeth had booked the room in her name so there would be no trace. But he'd had to show his ID to claim the room and he wasn't sure there wasn't some way to use that to trace him though he figured they'd probably have to call around to every hotel in LA to do it.

He'd fought with the front desk clerk over leaving a credit card for incidentals and finally got the man to agree to use the credit card on file, the one in Elizabeth's name. The man had looked suspicious but didn't look like the type to call the cops. But neither did Todd look like the type to pull the fetus out of a woman with his bare hands and stomp it to death.

"I'm in Los Angeles now. No one is going to be looking for me at the airport here. But I feel like a sitting duck in this motel."

"If anyone checks your flight info they'll see that you flew into LA. That would make the airport the last place you'd want to be. Sorry, Todd but you're going to have to sit tight. There are no other flights tonight anyway."

Elizabeth hadn't had time to get him a fake I.D. so he'd had to use his real name to catch the plane, expecting to get ambushed by airport security or the FBI at every turn. He'd nearly feinted going through the security checkpoint.

Elizabeth was right. His name on the plane ticket left a neon trail for anyone with half a brain to follow.

"There has to be a flight somewhere? I'll go anywhere as long as it's out of the country."

"Beggars can't be choosy, Todd. I'm not going to change your destination. Besides, there's a reason that you're going there. You've got more work to do."

"I'm not doing any more abortions." Todd could almost hear Elizabeth smile through the phone.

"Good night, Todd. Get some sleep. You've got a lot of traveling to do in the morning."

She hung up the phone before Todd could reply. Todd considered calling her back before he put the phone down on the nightstand. He stared across the room remembering everything he'd done in the last two days, all the blood, the muffled screams and eyes filled with terror. There was no way he was going to get any sleep tonight.

Todd crawled under the covers fully dressed. He picked up the TV remote and switched on the TV that sat across the room in an entertainment center that looked like an old fashioned armoire. Todd stared at the Shopping Network for what seemed like hours. His mind wasn't registering a thing on the screen. He kept thinking about Stephanie...and Cathy.

The big woman would probably be sitting by Stephanie's bedside comforting her and telling her all about how she was going to make Todd suffer for what he'd done. Stephanie may not have died but she wouldn't exactly be up and walking around either, not after the beating her belly had taken. He only hoped that Cathy would be too worried about Stephanie to leave her bedside. Todd wasn't worried about the police or the FBI. All they could do was arrest him. He didn't want to think about the things Cathy could do to him. He had to get out of here.

Todd had already spent five hours on a plane. Another eight hours waiting around for his next flight would give Cathy a lot of time to track him down. She'd know that he was running and he didn't think she'd be so emotionally distraught over Stephanie that she would let his trail get cold. She'd be right on his ass.

If he didn't get the hell out of there soon he'd be looking down the barrel of Cathy's nine before he could make his connection.

I should have killed her before I left.

Todd looked out the window. It was still dark. He looked back at the TV screen where a B-list celebrity whose name he couldn't remember was trying to sell Teflon cookware endorsed by an A-list chef whose name Todd had never heard of. It seemed like morning would never arrive.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Todd didn't know when he'd fallen asleep but he'd almost overslept. He called down to the front desk and asked for a taxi to the airport. Fifteen minutes later he was sitting in the back of a yellow cab pulling into the airport looking for departing flights.

"I need the international terminals."

"No problem."

They pulled to a halt in front of the airport and Todd slipped the cabdriver a twenty and then sprinted into the airport.

He went to one of the electronic kiosks to print his ticket and then went directly to the security checkpoint. His plane had already started boarding and was scheduled to depart in twenty minutes. If he didn't get there soon he'd miss his flight.

The line was short which meant that the security guards had time to actually do their jobs. A couple of homeland security officers were checking IDs at the front of the line before sending passengers through the metal detectors.

Great. Just what I needed.
Todd thought.

Todd checked and then double checked himself for metal objects. He didn't have so much as a set of keys or some loose change. He was still wearing the old man's pants with a pair of flip-flops and a t-shirt he'd bought at the hotel.

He had no baggage and he wondered if that would look suspicious. Who left the country without bags?

Maybe I should buy a suitcase? He thought. But there was no time.

He scanned the crowd looking for anyone who looked out of place, anyone who might be giving him too much scrutiny. Everyone looked normal. Just the normal tourists and business men. He was the only one who looked the least bit odd.

He saw a tall woman with a blonde crew-cut and broad shoulders. His heart beat raced.

Oh shit. Is that Cathy?

He squinted across the crowded airport trying to get a good look at the woman but she was too far away. The woman ducked into the women's bathroom before Todd could get a better look at her. Todd began to perspire again. He started hyperventilating. His vision narrowed until it felt like he was looking at everything through a keyhole. His hearing became muffled like he was underwater. He felt sick and he looked guilty as hell. Todd knew that he had to pull it together. The line was moving quickly and pretty soon he'd be face to face with the security officer. He was almost up to the front of the line.

They're going to think I'm smuggling drugs.

Todd imagined himself being pulled out of line and submitted to a cavity check by brutal men with rubber gloves. He shivered at the thought. He swallowed deeply, took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. He looked back over his shoulder to see if the woman with the crew-cut was out of the bathroom yet but he didn't see her.

Then it was his turn to go through the metal detector.

"ID."

The Homeland Security officer was a middle aged Latino man with pockmarked skin and a thick neck. Todd nervously held out his ID and his plane ticket. The officer looked at the ID and then back up at Todd then back down at the ID.

When he looked at Todd the second time Todd was almost certain the man was going to pull him out of line and arrest him.

"Have a nice day, sir."

Todd sighed and forced a smile. He kicked off his shoes, removed his belt and walked through the metal detector just as the woman with the crew-cut left the women's room. She was too far away for Todd to see her clearly but he was almost certain that it was Cathy. Somehow, she had found him. Todd rushed to the terminal. If he was lucky, he would just barely make his flight. Then it wouldn't matter if that was Cathy or not. He'd be long gone. Then he remembered his plane ticket. It was in his own name just like the one that had brought him to Los Angeles. Anyone smart enough to trace him to LA would also be smart enough to find his connecting flight.

Oh well, there's nothing I can do about that now.

His plane was still boarding when Todd arrived at the terminal. He stepped into line behind an elderly black couple and shuffled down the runway sweating and jittering the entire time as if he were going through withdrawals. He shifted nervously from foot to foot and kept looking behind him. Yesterday he had been prepared to die or go to prison but now, with freedom so close, he was petrified that he'd be apprehended or killed before he could get away.

As Todd boarded the airplane he continued to examine the other passengers. He watched as they crammed their bags into the overhead compartments and wriggled and jostled their way into their seats wondering which one of them was really a cop and why it was taking them so long to arrest him. He expected a sky-marshal to handcuff him and pull him off the plane at any moment or for Cathy to suddenly burst onto the plane with guns blazing. He didn't relax until the plane's wheels left the tarmac and it began its ascent. He'd been in the sky for less than twenty minutes when exhaustion finally overcame him. Todd leaned his head against the window and stared out at the clouds. Soon he was fast asleep. He didn't awake until the wheels touched down ten hours later and the fasten seatbelt sign went off.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Todd exited the plane still reeling from his adventure. He had never expected to still be alive and free. His plan had been to get to as many women as he could before the cops caught up with him and then to kill himself. But he hadn't counted on Ms. Santiago's help. All the years he'd worked with her and he'd never known that they were members of the same environmentalist group. She told him that she'd only figured it out after she'd read a post on the Zero Population message board asking if it was okay to talk a woman into having an abortion and then the very next day Todd had been accused of doing that very thing. Since then she'd been following him. She'd seen what he did to Nicolene.

"I still don't understand why you're helping me though? Talking a woman into having an abortion is one thing but what I've done..." Todd's expression went blank and he'd stared off into the distance. Elizabeth dismissed his concerns with a wave of her hand as if he were merely being childish.

"I've been part of Heimlich's group for five years. I was in on his plan. I was given a different task. They sent me to dairy farms. I've been putting Progesterex in milk vats at some of the biggest dairy farms in the country. Dairy farms that ship products all over the world. I'd been at it for two weeks. I figured that if I put it in the milk, all of those women drinking milk during their pregnancies would find themselves experiencing premature menopause and spontaneous abortions. Heimlich didn't think it was enough. That's why he decided to put it in the water."

Todd still couldn't believe it. She'd paid for his plane ticket and drove him to the airport and now here he was, in Sao Paulo, Brazil where no one would be looking for him.

He walked down to baggage claim and a man in a dark suit stood there holding a small sign that said "Hammerstein".

Todd walked over to him.

"I'm Todd...Todd Hammerstein."

"Hi, I'm Vitor. Elizabeth sent me. There's a car waiting up front."

Todd followed Vitor to a small economy car that looked more like an oversized golf cart.

"It's electric. Environmentally friendly."

That was the last word he said as they drove through the labyrinthine streets of one of the biggest and most over-crowded cities in the world. They drove for two hours whipping in and out of traffic that made LA look like a quiet country road, darting down narrow streets at 60 miles an hour until they finally reached their destination. Vitor reached behind the seat and handed Todd a new messenger bag.

"This is for you. Elizabeth said you'd know what to do."

Todd took the bag and stepped out of the car. Vitor smiled at him as he looked into the bag, he must have known what was inside. Todd was pretty sure he did too. He looked at the twenty little paper bags stacked inside. He opened one and it was filled with hundreds of tiny blue pills with the letter "P" stamped into them. He smiled and looked up at the sign on the building and the acres of pools filled with water beyond it.

"Departamento de Sao Paulo do Tratamento da Agua"

Even though he had no idea how to speak Portuguese, Todd was pretty sure he knew what it meant just as he knew what was in those pills.

He walked around to the side of the building and scaled the gate, dropping down beside one of the vast pools of water.

He opened up a paper bag and began dumping the pills into the water. He opened the next bag and the next one, emptying their contents into the water basins. He was just about to open the next bag when a loud boom echoed in his ears and a burning pain speared through his back and into his chest. He tried to inhale and blood bubbled up in his lungs. Todd turned slowly as black spots danced before his eyes. The world tilted and shifted out of focus. He didn't need to see straight to recognize the person walking toward him aiming the gun at his head.

"Hello, Cathy."

The next shot knocked Todd off of his feet and into the water. Todd sank to the bottom of the water basin. He knew that he was dying. His lungs were filling with water and he had two bullet holes in his chest. He could see Cathy's face above him contorted in rage, the messenger bag still floating on the surface, the remaining paper bags falling out into the water and all those little pills spilling out of the bags and dissolving.