The Collective Protocol (8 page)

An arm snaked over the top of a shield and a metal bar crashed into the sergeant’s helmet. She shook her head and blinked tears from her eyes, then she shouted, “Open fire! We need to create space so we can get out of here.”

“Are you sure, sergeant?” Jimmie grunted as a heavy body pressed against his shield.

“Yes! Do it,” she answered and fired directly into the chest of a man in front of her. His lifeless body fell forward and continued to stay upright, suspended between the press of the crowd and the shield while his blood smeared across the white NYPD logo on the face of her shield.

The other officers held their fire, expecting the crowd to disperse at the sound of gunfire. When they didn’t, two officers fired around their shields. Someone from the crowd reached out and grasped one of the pistols and yanked hard enough to send the officer off-balance. He lowered his shield slightly to catch himself and several pairs of hands grasped his helmet.

The officer gurgled as the crowd pulled his helmet and the chinstrap choked him. He was helpless to do anything since one arm was trapped behind his shield and the other was extended into the crowd where they continued to work at prying the pistol from his grip. “Help him!” Jimmie yelled from the opposite side of the small perimeter. If that man went down, the entire line could collapse.

The officer beside the trapped man fired point-blank into the face of one of the crazed offenders and he fell backwards into the crowd. It was enough of a reprieve for the officer to lift the shield back to chest height and he fired an entire magazine blindly into the mob. It created a momentary buffer zone where he was able to pull his arm and weapon back behind the safety of the shield.

Jimmie held his fire while he considered the investigation and potential prison time that could be associated with killing a civilian. He knew that he had a right and obligation to defend himself and those around him, but was he willing to risk losing everything he’d ever worked for? There was a hard thud against the shield as a member of the crowd jabbed a crowbar roughly where his face would have been if not for the small barrier between them.

The thunderous report of a shotgun fired from a few feet away forced his mind from the legality of the situation. They were obviously in a life-and-death struggle here. He brought his hand around the side of the shield and fired into the stomach of a woman holding a rusty knife. She folded over and he watched in horror as the others simply advanced towards him over her prone body.

The shotgun fired again and then a third time immediately after that. Jimmie felt the impact of a few pellets against his riot gear, but nothing penetrated his uniform. The gun fired again and several homeless people fell away giving him a clear view of the shooter. The beleaguered officer recognized Rob’s massive frame as he stood square against the entire mob.

His partner racked another round and fired directly at the small circle of police. Their ballistic shields and body armor saved them from the total decimation that the shotgun inflicted upon the crowd. “Come on!” Rob shouted and fired another devastating blast into the crowd. They lowered their shields and fled back towards the line of fear-paralyzed officers.

Jimmie sprinted headlong and hit the invisible wall at the same time as everyone else. His body responded instantly to the fact that he’d almost died and left his mother without her only son, even if he was adopted. He’d almost died uselessly trying to play a hero. There was nothing that a few police officers could do against the thousands of homeless people who populated Times Square. The homeless would eventually move out and own the entire island and there was nothing that he could do about it. He should run to his car and flee to his home in Brooklyn.

He shook his head and placed both hands over his ears. That wasn’t him thinking those things. He would never let Manhattan be overrun and he sure as hell wouldn’t let his friends and family down. Jimmie didn’t understand what was happening, but he knew that the thoughts and feelings assaulting him were not his own. He loved the city and he would defend it with his life if it came down to it.

Rob moved towards him like he was pushing against a strong current and slowly lifted a massive hand to place it on his shoulder. “Told you I’d be back,” his partner struggled to say.

He nodded his thanks and pointed back towards Lower Manhattan. “We need to get the sergeant to pull these men back. It’s better that way.”

Rob ducked his head and turned to where the sergeant crouched on one knee like she wore a heavy chain around her neck.
This is going to kill us if we stay here
, Jimmie thought and took an involuntary step towards the squad car several blocks away.

A police helicopter zoomed into sight overhead and the patrol cop stared in shock as the tail boom shot to the left, spinning it uncontrollably into a giant television on the side of a building. Both exploded in a brilliant fireball and Jimmie watched helplessly as the burning wreckage fell to the ground. Whatever was happening here was bigger than the NYPD. They needed the National Guard in here to take care of the situation.

He took a faltering step forward towards the Square and the flaming wreckage. His mind screamed at him to please not put it through the torment of passing the threshold once more. He
had
to go to the crash site. It was his duty, his responsibility to protect these people.

Suddenly his mind seized up and he stopped. His hand grasped the service pistol in its holster and jerked the weapon out. He could feel his arm moving towards his head with the weapon and was powerless against whatever force had taken hold of him. Jimmie placed the gun against his head and he stared straight ahead as his finger depressed the trigger.

The pistol went flying as Rob batted it away from his head at the last minute. Jimmie collapsed as whatever force had invaded his body fled. His partner knelt beside him and stared hard into his eyes. “What was that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t have control of my body,” Jimmie answered truthfully.

A female voice exploded in everyone’s mind. “THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING. YOU WILL KNOW TERROR AND SUFFERING.”

As quickly as the voice blossomed it disappeared and the veil of fear that had settled over the area lifted away to reveal a beautiful fall day in the city. And then the screams began once people discovered the thousands of dead and injured.

ELEVEN

“America is in the grip of fear and we are on the verge of losing ourselves to this terror,” the psychology professor stated. His features were distorted far more than usual as the small battery-powered desk lamp provided almost all of the light in the lecture hall. Emergency lights illuminated the walkways and the sides of the class, but everything else was draped in shadows.

“Take, for instance, the power blackouts that we’re currently experiencing. Authorities are powerless to stop them. We don’t know what’s causing employees to randomly shut down power generation equipment and barricade the doors so no one can enter. Traditional logic would say that there’s some type of union strike going on at the power company. However, in our new paranoia-stoked psyche, people see the power outages as another manifestation of the hysteria that has gripped this country for over a month.”

A student in the second row raised her hand and Reagan snorted in disgust from several rows above her. She’d had a few run-ins with the girl before and she did not like her. She was one of those know-it-all girls who thought they had the answer to everything and didn’t listen to anyone else’s point of view. “So, if the power outages all over the country aren’t part of a larger conspiracy to cripple the economy and plunge the United States into chaos, what’s causing them?”

“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” the professor asked. “Why is it that these men and women are turning off equipment—and in some instances destroying it as well? It certainly seems crazy or at the very least ill-intentioned. We can’t just look at the blackouts and our current inconveniences in a vacuum; we must also take into account the animal attacks across the south, the homeless uprising in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, even the night club attack just a few blocks away from this school.”

That last part made Reagan sit up and pay closer attention to what he had to say. “I’d pose this question to you,” he continued. “What is it about the United States that makes it the target of these types of events? Certainly, they’re tragic and only a month ago, the idea that more than a half a million people would be dead would have been preposterous. Now we just tally the numbers at the end of each day and thank the Lord that we survived once again.

“Is that why we’re seeing these events? Because of our callous disregard for human life? Maybe we deserve these plagues against our nation. Our public psyche needs to be purged and then reset.”

She had finally had enough. She’d sat and listened to this guy talk and spread his stupid theories all semester. Some of the other kids may take whatever load of crap they were force-fed and then ask for more, but not her. “You’re wrong!” Reagan shouted.

The professor stopped mid-rant and said, “Excuse me?”

“I said you’re wrong. We don’t deserve this. It’s not some type of… of biblical plague affecting only the United States.”

The older instructor peered into the semi-darkness of the crowd as the stadium seating rose above him. “I’m sorry, who’s speaking please?”

Reagan looked for help from the students to her left and right, who both made motions with their eyes to indicate that she should stand up. She stood slowly and said, “Um, Reagan Lockhart, sir.”

The professor crossed his arms over his chest and tapped a finger against his chin. “Lockhart… Lockhart… You’re the girl who was at the Razor’s Edge the night of the massacre,” he stated. “I never said that we had a
biblical
plague, young lady. I did ask if we deserved it because of our rampant consumerism, flagrant violations of nature’s laws and total disregard for anyone but ourselves. The American people are a disgusting race, the kind that makes others hate us unconditionally.”

Her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands as she listened to him rant. “Are you an American citizen, professor?”

“Of course I am,” he replied instantly.

“If you hate it here so much, then why don’t you leave? You’ve been given the right to stand in front of others and say the things that you’re saying because you live here. Go try doing that in Nicaragua. You’d disappear and no one would ever hear from you again.”

“Is that a threat?” he asked in alarm. “The Dean said we should watch out for you and now you’re threatening me?”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t threaten you,” she replied in disbelief. “I challenged your accusation that our nation deserves to have all of these things happen to us.”

“You will leave this lecture hall immediately or I’ll call the campus police and have you escorted away!”

“Are you kidding me? Someone disagrees with you and you threaten to have them arrested? The rest of us may have some quirks, but its people like you who are the real problem.”

Several people in the audience clapped in approval and the professor glared in the direction of the sounds. “Get out! Don’t you ever return to this classroom or I will have you expelled!”

Reagan bent to gather her things. How had the day turned to this? It had started out badly, with another blackout, and now this. She slung her backpack over her shoulder and pushed roughly along the row of seats until she’d cleared the legs and knees of her fellow students.

She held her head high as she walked up the stairs towards the exit. She
knew
that she had said the right thing and for a member of the faculty to say that we
deserved
these events was preposterous. A quick glance at her watch told her that she had enough time to make it over to the Admissions office so she could drop the class before the hateful little man could go into the system after class and give her a failing grade.

*****

Thousands of miles away, Paige Watkins smiled underneath the Neuroactuator’s headband. Her sister’s world was about to come crashing down around her. She’d watched her flourish and grow over the years under her loving little family’s blanket of trust and stability. It made her sick.

There was a reason why she’d specifically chosen the nightclub in Washington to demonstrate the power of the Neuroactuator for the prime minister. She followed Reagan’s blog and knew days in advance that her sister planned to be there working on a project, so it was a simple matter to arrange for the music files and records to be swapped out to the ones with her messages hidden inside.

Even as she controlled millions of animals, she’d watched her sister squirm under the constant battery of questions from the police. She’d been the one who made the call about the stupid dog in the neighborhood that Reagan cared so much about. She’d just spat those words from the old professor’s mouth.

Paige planned to up Reagan’s suffering to a whole new level, but before she underwent the psychological pain that the telepath had planned for her, she needed to experience some physical pain. It was Friday and her sister would likely be going to a club, but she didn’t know which one so there was no time to prearrange for the much easier music hypnosis. She’d watch her to determine where she went.

It was a highly inefficient use of part of her talents, but for some reason she couldn’t penetrate her sister’s mind. Every time she tried to poke around inside her head, she was met with resistance and a blank canvas. Either her sister was purposefully veiling her thoughts or she was truly dumb. Paige opted for the latter.

Her mind pulled away from Washington and she looked at the United States from high above the Earth. “Superimpose map,” she muttered aloud and the computer overlay the state boundaries and icons for the larger cities over the real terrain below.

Hmm… Where have I not been in a while?
she asked herself.
Ooh, Vegas!

Her consciousness sped towards the desert city and she began searching for a target to play a little mischief with.