The Beginning of the End (Book 1): Toward the Brink (13 page)

“And I’m Neddy Gordon.” The other nodded.

Mulhaven recognized more than just a shady individual in the tall one. He could also be an asset. It mattered not what he’d done before, but what he could do now. And for them, he could do a great deal.

“Where you headed?”

“Not sure as yet, just trying to get out of town,” the Tall Man told Mulhaven, who had taken his hand away from his pistol in a gesture of peace.

“I hear you on that. Why don’t you join with us. We plan on doing the same thing once we get enough supplies together.”

“Have you lost your mind, Mulhaven?” Cindy demanded. “We don’t even know this guy. Dressed in a cheap suit and carrying a fuckin’ gun like some hood from a cheap gangster movie and you want him to tag along?”

“Young lady, I’ll have you know this suit cost over five hundred bucks, my gun cost considerably more, and I’ve never been in a cheap gangster movie,” the Tall Man countered Cindy’s objections. “And yes, I’d like to come along. I don’t even care where you’re headed as long as it’s away from this place.”

All eyes turned to see Cindy’s reaction. Mulhaven started laughing first and was soon joined by the others. With the tension of the moment eased, the Tall Man and his companion now accepted, they moved to the rear of the store to debate their next moves over some welcomed coffee. Thoughts soon turned to breakfast; no one had eaten for nearly twenty-four hours.

“There’s a small market a few blocks from here,” Elliot said, “not as much stock as Albertsons but should be good enough for what we need.”

“Well then, we better make a move on it,” the Tall Man said as he sipped from a mug of strong coffee. Black like his name and nature. “It won’t be long before there are more looters out. Better organized—and better armed!”

“You said you dealt with looters yesterday?” Mulhaven asked.

“Yes sir, at my store.” Neddy Gordon spoke up. “Come ‘round to rob me, they did. Iff’n it weren’t fer Mista Black here, I’d be deader ’n they are now!”

“Well that answered my next question about how you handled them.”

Mulhaven rubbed the stubble on his chin as he considered the options.

“I think Elliot, Cindy, Chuck, and Neddy should race down to the market while Allan and I start loading supplies up,” he said.

“Cindy, take this.” Elliot handed her a nylon tactical drop-leg holster and web belt that was sold in the store. “Put your Colt in this; it’ll be better than carrying the shotgun around in the store.”

“Let me take this. We may need it.” Mr. Black grabbed a siphon transfer pump kit off the wall. “You know gas won’t be the only thing we’re going to start running out of, don’t you?”

“Yes. One hour, Elliot, no more, okay!” Mulhaven said.

At approximately the same time as Elliot and friends went grocery shopping, two executive jets were in the skies. One was inbound to Idaho, lifting off from Virginia. Aboard were a dozen members of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group, still often referred to as SEAL Team Six. This was the first time the unit had operated under the administration of anyone other than the Navy or the Joint Special Operations Command. The team was to be briefed an hour before landing as to the nature of their mission. They packed live ammo, biological hazard suits, and satellite phones.

The other jet was nearing the Aleutian Islands on its way to India via Japan and Thailand for fuel stops. The larger, luxurious Boeing 757 could carry over two hundred, but this flight had no more than fifteen, crew included.

“Sir,” Langlie began, “I’ve just checked with the pilot, and we won’t be on the ground in Japan or Thailand any longer that it takes to refuel, sir.”

“That’s good, Langlie. I don’t want to leave the plane for anything, do you hear? Anything!”

“Yes, sir. I understand. It won’t be long, sir. You should get some rest. We will be welcomed with open arms in India, sir. They know nothing of what’s happening in Idaho. I’m sure of it.”

“And you’re sure they’re receptive to the project?”

“Yes, of course sir! The very idea of increasing crop sizes by using the growth hormone is very appealing to the Indian government.”

“And we can reproduce them exactly as Dennard did but without the complications?”

“I think so, sir. We have two of his most trusted assistants with us on this flight plus enough concentrated hormone to begin fertilizing more than ten thousand acres of crops. And the best news, sir, is we will not be restricted to a test period or a crop type. We’ve pretty much been granted
carte blanche
.”

Phillip Baer liked the sound of that. He knew that the old adage that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” could equally be adapted to “the way to extreme wealth, control, and influence is through control of the food supply.” It made perfect sense, especially when you made it seem so cheap, but with an added ingredient that would cause the regular consumer to become addicted, it was a guaranteed success.

“It is a pity that Dennard didn’t make it. We needed to find out from him what went wrong all of a sudden,” Baer lamented.

“Yes, I know what you mean, sir. He was truly an asset to this company, but I will keep our people searching for him.”

“You don’t think he succumbed to his own poison
,
so to speak, do you?”

“It’s always possible, sir, but it was Dennard himself that issued the edict to cease eating potatoes that had been fertilized with the hormone. I doubt he’d have gone against his own directive.”

Baer, the man in control of a ruthless empire, knew nothing of the ruthlessness of his own henchman. He believed it was all his own doing, that he was the one steering his own ship.

# # #

Abandoned cars dotted both sides of the streets with the occasional empty parking space tribute to the fortunate enough who’d managed to get out of the city or perhaps never even came in. Elliot wondered how many died, changed into red-eyed horrors, or simply ran screaming mad into the night and now lay hidden behind a rock or a tree, waiting for an unsuspecting traveler to come by.

“I think they’re dead,” Elliot said as soon as they were under way. “You’ve seen them, right? What do you think happened to them?”

The Tall Man, Chuck Black to his new friends, thought about the question as he drove to the store. Cindy leaned forward from the back seat in a sign of interest.

“Well, let me see. I encountered several up close. One of them nearly spewed that green stuff all over me, and I believe you become one of them if you get that on you, but I’m not sure. I saw a few out near the airport in a farmhouse. I found a family all dead inside. It was murder/suicide. The father knew he and his family were turning into these zombie-like creatures—that’s what I call them anyway, because of the resemblance to the zombies in
Night of the Living Dead
—and shot his wife and kid before turning the gun on himself. It was a very disturbing scene.”

The Tall Man hoped that by being so candid, he would endear himself to his new friends. He recognized the disaster unfolding before him and knew that safety could be found in numbers, at least for now.

“Shit, you been through a lot since yesterday, ain’t ya, Mista Black?” Neddy still had that “forever in your debt” sound in his voice.

The Tall Man nodded at Neddy, acknowledging his question.

“As I left the farm house, I was confronted by two … farmhands, perhaps, outside between me and the car. They had red eyes, burning red. Their skin was a pale white, dry and cracked. There were open sores developing on their faces. To answer your question, Elliot, yeah, they do look dead and move like it, but the red eyes remind me of sufferers of the Ebola plague, and the green vomit is obviously bile forcing its way up because they have no bowel movements. The cause for that could be any number of things, but again, Ebola is a candidate.”

Elliot and Cindy were impressed with Chuck’s knowledge. He was no doctor, that was for sure, but perhaps a former medic in the Army?

“Shit, you sure know yer stuff, Mista!”

The Tall Man grinned this time at Neddy, who seemed to be a harmless type and obviously grateful. A feeling of contentment came over him, something he hadn’t experienced in a long, long time.

“Thank you, Neddy. I appreciate it.”

“That’s interesting you say that, Mr. Black—err, sorry, Chuck. I hadn’t thought of an exotic disease like that, but how would that occur without any warning from the health authorities like the CDC?”

“The only way it would or could happen is if it was intentional.”

“Intentional!” Cindy jumped into the conversation. “Why would anyone want to release such a deadly virus? Who would do such a thing?”

The Tall Man knew when he walked away from the Hidden One he would someday have to come clean with his involvement. He hadn’t thought it would be the very next day though.

“Let me tell you something.” The Tall Man pulled into the practically empty parking lot of the grocery store. “Until yesterday, I worked with Baer Industries, and …”

“What, you
worked
for Baer?” Elliot spun in his seat.

“Yes. Internal security.”

“What the hell does ‘internal security’ mean?”

“Easy, Elliot,” Cindy said.

Elliot was sitting next to a man who’d worked with the company that, as far as he was concerned, was the cause of the tragedy. He also believed that Baer was responsible for his mother contracting cancer from her contact with the ill patients.

“Take it easy, Elliot. I know what you’re thinking,” the Tall Man said. Elliot cocked a look of surprise at him. “You’re thinking that Baer had something to do with this outbreak, right?”

“Well, yeah. Are you saying different?”

“No not at all, Elliot. As a matter of fact, I had to pick up the wife of the company’s leading biochemist, the very one who developed the growth hormone for potatoes, and she turned into one of those fucking critters. Sorry, ma’am. I forgot my manners,” the Tall Man said.

“That’s okay.” Cindy smiled at Chuck and when their eyes met, for a moment, a surge of adrenalin raced through her. She turned away, blushing, hoping he didn’t see it.

“She changed into one of those things in the back of the car. Threw up just as I jumped out. It was close.”

“What did you do with her?” Cindy asked.

“Well, I did what I had to. I shot her once in the head, which I might add seems to do the job.”

“The job?” Elliot had cooled down. He realized that Mr. Black had only worked for Baer; he wasn’t responsible for producing the hormone.

“The job of finishing them off quickly, which is what you want to do.” The Tall Man pulled up in front of the store in a no parking zone. “They seem to move faster the closer they get to you. Like you have something they want.”

“I got the same feeling.”

The Tall Man looked at Elliot and nodded. He liked this kid and the others too, but not enough to mention his involvement with the Hidden One. Hell, he didn’t know enough about that mysterious old bastard to tell.

The members of the SEAL team were informed that the plane was getting ready for its final approach to Boise International Airport. As expected, there was no response from the control tower, and the pilots had to land manually, praying that the runway was clear.

“This could get a bit rough!” the SEAL commander said.

The executive jet banked then corrected before shuddering. The landing gear could be heard as it extended.
Not so bad,
most began to think. A slight vibration had started before growing into a violent tremor.

“Hold on. Hold on! We’re going in hard,” the commander called.

The jet screamed as it overflew the runway before crashing into the ground just beyond South Orchard Street . The plane tipped to the right. The tip of a wing dug into the ground, scraping a huge gouge in the soil before it tore off. The plane cartwheeled several times, debris flying in all directions. Finally it erupted into a ball of flame as it came to rest in a field of trees.

There were no survivors.

A group of people in camouflage uniforms had witnessed the entire calamity as they staggered along the tarmac. They wandered aimlessly, however, unconcerned with the plane crash, stopping every so often to expel a green bile from their bodies.

# # #

“Jesus Christ!” Elliot slipped on the linoleum floor of the store. “Where’d all this water come from?”

“You said the power went out, didn’t you?” the Tall Man asked.

“Yeah, probably sometime during the night.”

“Ice from the freezers. We better watch our step; it’s pretty dark in here.”

“Look! Flashlights!” Cindy pointed to the light hardware aisle.

“Good. Grab some, Cindy. We’ll need them in here. Elliot, grab a cart. We’ll load up as many batteries as we can. We’ll grab a flashlight each while we’re here, but you’ve better ones back at the surplus store to take with us on our journey.”

“What else should we load up on?” Cindy asked.

“Canned foods, powdered milk, and some bottled water. Might be a good idea to take some toothpaste, soap, and deodorant. You haven’t told me where you plan on going to yet.”

“Shoshone,” Elliot said. “As a first stop, then maybe keep going north into Canada.”

“Shoshone?” Neddy perked up. “I lived in Shoshone one time wiff my daddy.”

The Tall Man nodded. Elliot sensed he was deep in thought. Was he deciding on whether or not to tell them something?

“You know that Baer are responsible for the hormone, and from the start, there were major problems. I know the lab trials were a sham. It was conducted on a tiny potato farm owned by Baer Industries. They didn’t even use the real hormone but a harmless substitute.” The Tall Man was feeling good about getting this off his chest. He never did like working for Langlie or the Hidden One himself. “During this time, Baer bought up a lot of property and a bunch of people who could help him in his goal.”

“Which was?” Cindy asked.

“Greed, lust, power—the usual things. You know the story pretty well from there,” the Tall Man said.