This Is the End (12 page)

“What did you say you did in the military, again?” I ask her while I stare at the efficiency of her keystrokes. The complexity of the commands she’s laying out is staggering and if things were different—if I wasn’t so absolutely sure that she hates my very existence and the world hadn’t ended—I would probably ask her out on a date.

“I never said, but I was in a spec ops intelligence unit—encryption, data forensics—but I’ve been working with computers my whole life. I modded your app shortly after it came out,” she says without looking up from the screen. The glow of the monitors mixed with the morning haze gives her face an attractive quality that I didn’t see before.

“It’s definitely not just remote access for emergencies; someone saw you ping in and is trying to communicate. Though, again, it could just be a prerecorded message.” She finishes typing the last bit of commands and then the monitor to our left loads a fresh vid-feed.

The seal of the United States pops up, the words “Department of Homeland Security” encircle it over and over again, in the background there’s a giant flowing American flag.

“Rob. Motherfucker, he was watching everything the whole time,” I say in a whisper and she looks up at me and asks, “What?”

“Robert McMillan. He came to visit me the day before I was frozen; he was in my office without me knowing, just showed up with some juiced-up knuckle draggers when I was in the bathroom.”

“You personally knew Robert McMillan? Jesus, you are evil,” she says back to me. I look down and stare as if I’m going to say something, but I don’t and just nod my head in agreement.

“Anyway, I can play the video if you want,” she says.

I look at the spinning letters surrounding the seal. “Did you make sure that this wasn’t some kind of hidden thing, waiting to come up and seize control of the servers?” I ask back and she nods her head.

“I’ve singled it out from the other messages. It definitely originated outside of the main servers; it’s not even on the ghost drives. This was sent to here from a remote location.” She gets up out of the chair and motions for me to sit. The faucet in the bathroom is still running and we both cringe at the horrific heaving sounds coming from behind the closed door.

“You think we should wait for Scott?” I ask her and she shrugs her shoulders and says, “We can replay it for him if he really wants to see it, but I doubt he’s coming out of there anytime soon.”

I nod and then move my hand towards the screen but hesitate before I tap play.

I start to say, “What if this crashes the—” but Kel moves over the desk to tap the screen but stops after her chest brushes against my hand.

She quickly stands up and says, “It’s not going to. I’ve isolated it. Worst that can happen is that this unit and whatever it’s tied to goes down. Which one are the lights and locks on?”

I point to the far right screen. She crosses her arms and looks at me like I’m several types of stupid and says, “There, now press play, please.”

I move towards the screen. It’s the simplest movement to tap a screen, that’s why everything went to touch-sensitive displays. I don’t want to touch anything, but I do. The background music sounds news-like and patriotic. The face of Robert McMillan comes to life in front of us on the screen. He’s standing at a podium with a yellowed-looking picture of the Capital Building behind him. He’s smiling and staring into the camera as if he—then it hits me. I stop the video.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Kel asks me. I put my head down and it’s almost too much to say. I can feel it deep inside my chest, the unfamiliar feeling of amusement. The sheer joy and absurdity of the thought process, but also at the fact that I think I just figured everything out. I feel the sound before I hear it. I’m laughing. I’m almost near the point of uncontrollable hiccupping, gagging, and tear-filled laughter.

“I’m not a monster,” I say to her and she slides one foot back, which, I guess if I were in her shoes, I would, too. I do probably look like I’ve just lost it. Maybe I have. The very idea, the very thought that I just had, though it makes sense, sounds completely crazy.

“What?” she asks and I try to say what I’m thinking but I can’t. I just can’t stop laughing.

“Motherfucker,” I get out before I topple over in my chair and hit the floor, a move that makes me laugh at myself and keep laughing until I feel the little tears forming behind my closed eyes.

“Have you lost your mind?” asks Kel. She’s taken a couple of steps back towards the couch, back towards where their guns are. I wave my hand and try to say, “Yes,” but I can’t, so I nod my head and say, “Don’t,” instead. I’m laughing so hard that I begin coughing and then that turns into me gasping for air on the floor. I’m lying on my back staring into my ceiling, staring at all the exposed duct work that’s beginning to turn yellow from smoke and dust. Skinny Scott is still in the bathroom, the water has stopped and he’s moved on to making groans and grunts.

I look over at the door and then back up to the ceiling. “I’ve been there before, brother,” I say to myself.

Kel asks, “What?” again and I just shake my head and say, “It’s nothing.”

She moves a little closer and then says, “No, I was wondering what was so funny?”

“Oh, that. Yeah,” I say and start giggling again. Kel frowns and comes over to me and holds out her hand. I take it and she pulls me up. I brush dust off my suit and look her square in the eyes.

“I’m not the monster,” I say with a smile. She still looks as if she fell off a truck headed to an Indigo Girl’s reunion concert but some of the hardness has gone from her features; her eyes are a deep green-grey and her skin is pale but smooth. She looks unimpressed with my statement.

“How do you mean?” she asks.

I point to the screen where Robert McMillan, former Head and Secretary of The Department of Homeland Security is paused with a million dollar, shit-eating grin on his face, and say, “He’s the fucking monster; he did it.”

Scott comes out of the bathroom with a washcloth draped around his neck and looking more pale than green.

“What did I miss?” He asks.

* * *

“Let me say this out loud so I can get it straight in my head,” says Scott and then he continues, “You’re telling us that Robert McMillan launched some kind of biological attack on the United States, just so he could become President?”

“Yes,” I say. They’re both sitting on the couch and I’m in front of the television screen with the credits to
Castlevania
running on replay.

“Rob is—was—whatever—a completely power obsessed freak. The guy already, literally, thought that he ran the fucking government, which, for the most part, he did. But still, even with that, it was never the king’s seat.”

Kel is looking at me like I’m all sorts of stupid, again, and Scott is vacillating between watching me and the screen. I don’t know how many more times I can really go through the explanation.

“Okay, one more time with feeling,” I say and then start all over again. “Robert-fucking-evil-McMillan, through the Department of Homeland Security, launched an attack. Whether it was intentionally going to be large or not is unknown at this point, but that’s why I need you,” I point to Kel and then continue. “He launched a biological attack so that he could use that to gain enough power to crown himself President. Or dictator. Or whatever.”

I keep pacing back and forth in front of the screen and waving my hands. I feel like a college professor on speed; I can’t get the thoughts out quick enough.

“He put everything together. He had Phil, my layer—remember the one who apparently ran off with my ex wife?” They nod and I continue on. “He had Phil get me all doped up and drunk the night before I was frozen so that I couldn’t change my mind—not that I was going to, but still. Rob was pissed when I came out about some of the secret shit we were doing at that press conference. Pissed enough to visit me the next day and threaten me to my face. He knows that I keep everything backed up in triplicate; he also knew that if I decided to, I could drop a big fucking neutron bomb of truth about what the Department was up to. He fucking killed the world and it back fired, but he doesn’t—or didn’t—care about that. He got what he wanted, and blamed me. That’s why you guys were sent here. Not to pick me up; you were supposed to kill me.”

“That doesn’t really take the pressure off of you; you still helped him do this,” says Kel. She looks like she believes some of it. I can’t stop thinking about her at the screens tapping away; her bumping her breasts on my hand was a bonus. I haven’t been with a woman in roughly a year and a half. So pretty much any contact with a member of the opposite sex will have that effect on me right now, but there’s something about Kel.

She catches me looking at her funny and asks, “Well?”

“Well, what?” I say back and Scott repeats what she said.

“She said it doesn’t take the blame off of you, dude.” He looks better; we made some biscuits and chicken before we sat down. At least he doesn’t look like he’s dying anymore, though the rings underneath his bloodshot eyes tell a different story

“It does,” I say and stop pacing. “I had no idea what the fuck he and Phil were up to. I knew a couple things, easy things like railguns and high-tech camouflage shit; Phil told me about Project Mobile the night before I was frozen. I guess he figured that it wouldn’t matter, but I didn’t know about any of the real deals. I knew we had a chemical and neurological development team,” I say but Kel interrupts me.

“So you did know,” she says folding her arms and looking away, out the window again, as if she needs to hold onto the fact that I’m still the real monster.

I put my hand up to my face and then move it up and rub my bald head. “Jesus, are you even listening to me?” I said.

Scott stops me this time. “Dude, seriously, it’s the same thing. You might not have known exactly what you were working on, but you knew something, right?”

I open my mouth to rebut him, but I can’t, so I close it and look at both of them. They still hate me. They still think that I am responsible for all of this. I look out towards the windows. The smoke from the fires meanders from the horizon line and into the sky like huge lumbering caterpillars.

“Kel, do you think you could comb over my servers?” She looks back to me again, but this time a little of that hate is replaced by a twinkle.

“Too easy,” she says.

“Okay, good. Here,” I say and move over towards my desk, motioning for her to follow me. I sit down, power everything up and put in all of my passwords.

Everything comes to life in under a second. The screens dim for a half a second and we both notice it.

“What was that?” she asks. I get up and motion for her to sit again.

“I just opened up everything in the building except the door controls for you to look over. There’s a couple of hundred server racks that are powered up right now, waiting for you to get cracking; it’s a pretty big power drain.”

Her jaw opens slightly, there’s a small trace smile in her lips, but she quickly tries to hide her enthusiasm.

“What am I looking for exactly?” she asks.

I point at the screen that Robert McMillan’s face is on.

“Anything to do with that fucker, and what happened.”

“Awesome. I’m gonna lay down then if you two are gonna geek out,” says Scott. He spreads out on the couch and puts his feet up on one of the arm rests. I walk over and knock his boots off; he gets up too fast for his own good. He sits back down and holds his stomach for a few seconds as if he’s going to puke again.

“Nope. We, my good man, are going to see about my car,” I say.

“You have a car?” asks Scott. He’s still deciding whether or not getting up is a good idea.

“Yep, a Ford Focus.”

“Dude, you were like the richest guy in the world before all this shit and you have a Ford Focus?” he asks.

“You’ve never seen my Ford Focus,” I say and walk towards the door.

9.

When the doors open up I instantly stop; the smell of rotten and decaying flesh is too much. Scott must not have been paying any attention because he runs right into my back. I put my hand up and he does the same. I had forgotten what was out here. Scott can’t hold back and heaves behind me. I jump forward and step on someone’s hand; the sound of bones cracking under the heel of my shoe is almost enough to make me lose it. I suck in a mouthful of air and hold my breath. Jesus, even the air has the same sickening smell to it.

I turn around and Scott looks like hell again, he’s turning from pale back to a sickly shade of green and I watch as he fights another urge to spew. He looks over at me and I motion for him to follow. We make it to the other side of the security door; he clicks on the flashlight and we both sit down on the top step. I take my pack of smokes out and light one up, then hand it over for him to take. He shakes his head.

“No, I’m good. I just need to breathe,” he says.

I suck back and watch the cherry light up then get up. “You good?”

He waits a few more seconds and then replies, “Yeah, just wasn’t…I just forgot.”

I nod and say, “Me too.” And then start back down the steps towards the ground floor and the garage.

I don’t even know if the car is still there or not. Really, I just wanted to clear my head. I’m almost a hundred percent sure my theory on Rob is right, but even if I’m wrong, he still has to have more to do with this than most people thought.

We move forward; we keep on going through the motions of stepping over each other in silence. Scott is in front now, then I’ll round out and beat him forward on a landing and he’ll hand the flashlight off to me for a while.

It’s only six floors until we hit the garage then we’ll have to figure a way to get from the doorway to where my car is parked. If I’m right, then there won’t be a large chance of running into anything like the crooked man down in the garage. Even when everything was normal, I only staffed two security guys down here at all times.

Let’s face it, if anyone had gotten into the garage, they could have easily blown the building. There wasn’t much that I was going to be able too do about that. We move in silence the entire way until we see the big capital
G
on the wall.