Time Clock Hero (13 page)

Phoenix grabbed the lever on the door.  He flashed a knowing look at Fred, and Fred readied his shotgun.  He slowly cracked the door, as quietly as he could, and pulled it towards him.  He had just enough room for a peek.

Jason was right.  The room was full of convicts, probably well over the legal official capacity allowed by law for a room that size; and all of those Psyked-out convicts wandered and staggered around the room like welfare recipients at a job fair.  Across the room stood the Coke machines.  To the left of them he could see the next door, the one leading to the hall, the checkpoint, and the garage.  Jason was right when he hesitated before pulling open the door.  He knew what this room looked like.  The room, with long, aluminum tables and chairs set up on one side, probably a classroom for guards, looked like it had a seating capacity of thirty.  Right now, it looked as if three times that number now occupied it.  The other door Jason had talked about was half way down the wall to the left.

Phoenix’s phone rang.  He pushed the door back and grabbed his phone, angry about having to deal with yet another digital delay.  “What now?”

“Inbound choppers heading your way,” Mr. Krystal said.  “You’ve got six minutes before they make the run.”

Phoenix slipped the phone into his pocket.  He asked Jason for the pistol he had given him, and the keys to the checkpoint.  Jason did as he was asked.  With his hand on the door lever, Phoenix quickly looked over Jason’s shoulder.  The instant Jason turned to look, taking his attention off the real matter at hand, Phoenix grabbed him by the front of the shirt, swung the door open, and threw Jason into the room.  He closed the door and locked it.

The room full of convicts turned from quiet to metallic as chairs and tables toppled, and Jason screamed.

Phoenix and Fred ran back in the direction they came, turned right and turned right again into another hall.  The sound of the convicts and the racket of falling furniture, together with the screaming voice of Jason, blended together in a macabre and musical way.  They came to another door, the door entering the room from the side, and Phoenix stopped and listened.  The cry of Jason came from over on the far right, near the door he’d just been thrown through.

“The door’s clear,” Phoenix said, and he slowly opened it.

When Phoenix and Fred entered the room, the grisly site of Jason being torn apart held them in shocked stillness.  When some of the infected in the mob saw them, they turned; and most of them seemed to lose interest in their most recent victim.  The two men turned and ran, and more than a few convicts came after them.

“Next door,” Phoenix said, and he hurried towards the Coke machines.  The door opened easily away from him, and he led Fred out into the hall and closed the door behind him.

“What if the keys aren’t in the Hummer?”

“They are,” Phoenix shouted.

They reached the checkpoint, a yellow-painted wire cage of sorts, with an industrial prison lock, barred their way forward.  They unlocked it on the first try.  The next obstacle, the metal double doors, awaited them.  Phoenix prayed for them to be unlocked as he ran; but he also wondered how effective such a prayer would be, knowing he’d just willfully killed a man.  But Jason had deserved it, hadn’t he?  If Jason knew the convicts had been set up as guinea pigs, he was a murderer.  Maybe he’d been the one who made sure the blue juice got administered.

The double doors were locked.  Phoenix and Fred looked at each other for a second, then Phoenix tried one key after the other in quick succession, getting the doors unlocked somewhere after the fourth or fifth try.

The Hummer, a black, discontinued beast from a bygone era, was sitting just where Jason had said it would be – in an automotive bay next to the repair shop.  Phoenix jumped into the passenger seat, Fred took the driver’s seat.

“We’ve got keys,” Fred yelled.

“Do it!” Phoenix said. 

The dull, throaty staccato of military helicopters, deep and ominous, and a rumble of jets, could he heard in the distance.  The cavalry was less than a minute or two out.

“Do you hear---?”

“I heard it!” Insisted Phoenix. “Get us out of here! Now!”

“Who’s going to open the garage door?”

“This is a Hummer!  It opens doors all by itself!”

Fred started the engine, dropped the gear shift into drive, and hit the gas.   The Hummer sat in place for a millisecond as its wheels spun in place, screeching and smoking on the slick surface of the concrete.  Fred released the gas pedal a bit, and the vehicle lunged forward like a race horse out of a chute.

Phoenix reached for the seatbelt, but not before the beast slammed into the metal, rollup door, tearing the door into sections as it peeled away from the rails. The Hummer flew over the small, ramped-up approach to the garage and hit the gravel, bouncing from front to back. 

Fred stayed on the gravel drive, holding the wheel steady while keeping the Hummer’s gas pedal smashed up against the floor.  The vehicle hit several potholes, jarring and shaking them like rag dolls in a dog’s mouth.  The vehicle sped towards a double, chain link fence, which lay a hundred yards distant.

“I don’t see any troops!” Fred shouted with a sense of glee.

“That’s because they’re about to---!”

An explosion, ear-splitting and teeth-rattling, slammed into the prison behind them, engulfing their vehicle in a cloud of flame, smoke, and flying debris.  The back windshield shattered into a million, interlaced, tiny shards, blowing inward towards Phoenix and Fred, hitting the backs of the seats and flying past them only to bounce off the front windshield and hit their faces.

With his face bloodied but his eyes unhurt, Fred plowed through the fences, skimmed across a small creek, and climbed the vehicle up a hill into a small wooded area.  He didn’t slow down until he came back to the prison’s main service road. 

“I’m going to get my family and get them out of Nashville,” Fred said.  “Where do you want me to drop you off?”

Phoenix didn’t answer.  Instead, he looked back, knowing what awaited his wide opened eyes.  The prison had vanished in a cloud of fire and smoke, in a cloud so black and a fire so hot, that it would be hours before Nashville would be able to see its first man-made crater.

Phoenix stepped out of the Hummer half way between the prison and NPD, somewhere between Haywood Lane and Harding Place, near an exit ramp miraculously devoid of panhandlers and hookers, and he turned back towards the prison.  A cloud of smoke, hard and thick, rose up behind him.  It flattened out in the sky above, levelled, sheared it seemed, by winds coming out of the south.

A convoy of National Guard troops were rumbling off the west ramp onto I-24, heading towards downtown Nashville; and in his determination to not be seen, Phoenix vanished into the tall, wild growth between a guard rail and a sharp precipice.  He assumed, and rightfully so, that the weapon on his shoulder would land him into custody yet again, so he removed it and set it in the brush.  His Glock he removed from his belt and stowed in his pack.

Phoenix jogged along the interstate, keeping close to the limestone bluffs and as far away from the road as was possible.  He reached Harding Place forty-five minutes later.  Twenty more minutes and he reached NPD.  The parking lot in the rear was empty of vehicles except for a few unmarked cars.  Alaia’s car was parked in its usual place – though, given the circumstances, nobody would have ticketed her had she chosen the handicap space nearest the door.

At the double glass doors on the ground floor, Phoenix waved his key fob, the one Chief Cobb had forgotten to relieve him of, but the door refused to open.  He called Alaia.

“Hello, Phoenix, you jailbird you,” Alaia said playfully and with a ring of gladness in her voice.  “Where are you?”

“At the rear bottom door.  Let me in.”

“Darkeem’s on the way.”

“You sound pretty calm for someone who just heard an explosion,” Phoenix said.

“No, I just know my life’s easier now.  We’ll talk when you get up here.”  Her voice faded away, like she’d turned away from the phone, and then she ended the call.

Phoenix glanced around the back side of the NPD building impatiently.  Then he heard the elevator just inside the glass doors open.  He turned and saw Darkeem pushing on the exit device on the inside of the glass door.

Darkeem was just young kid, always with a smile on his face, and fairly stout, but he walked in a way that told people he could handle himself.  His face, attached to a head sticking out from an over-sized Titan’s jersey, had not a single blemish, but there was an unmistakable aura of energy and wit about him that seemed to spark like live wires crashing into one another.  He smiled when Phoenix walked in and, because he was glad to see him, reached out to hug him instead of motioning for a handshake.  Then he rubbed the top of his closely cut hair and, without batting an eyelash, told Phoenix that his mother needed him.

“She’s up in your old office, and she doesn’t think she likes it,” Darkeem said.

“Don’t let her fool you,” Phoenix said hurriedly, as he walked into the elevator, immediately reaching for the second floor button.  The dust from the explosion, though Phoenix had been in the car, covered his shoulders.  When he shook his head, a small cloud filled the elevator.

“You’re not going to leave here, are you?” Darkeem asked with his eyes trained on Phoenix.  “You’re gonna stay, right?”

“I guess that depends on your mom,” Phoenix said.

“Nobody ever stays with her.  They do for a little while, but then they’re off for someone better – that’s what mom always says.  But now we live in your office, so you have nowhere else to go.  You have to stay.”

“Looks like it,” Phoenix said, and when the doors opened, he hurried out into the hall on the second floor with Darkeem in close pursuit.

Alaia wasn’t in his office.  He waited in the hall until she showed up.  A few minutes later, she came in carrying a five-gallon jug of filtered water.  He took it from her and carried it into her office.

“The water mains were hit,” she said.  “But that’s good – because the water system’s been Psyked.”

“You got the video, so you saw what happened.”

“And no word from the mayor or anybody,” Alaia said.  “I’m telling you – it’s just me and NPD right now.  It’s like everyone’s gone.”

“You wanted the job,” Phoenix said.  “And you went straight to the top!”

“Now I just want to walk out.”

“Terrible place, right?” Phoenix said, making an ugly face with Darkeem.  “So, what’s the word out on the street?”

“The military took care of the prison – that you know.  Then there was St. David’s and Green Hills.  This Psyke Virus – and I know you must know it by now – is lethal to large numbers of people very, very quickly.”

“And that’s how it’s being used – end of world stuff, wouldn’t you guess?”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Is everything contained?”

“As of now, maybe,” Alaia said hopefully.  “What’s left of Green Hills has been quarantined and there are no reports of any trouble.  But, right now I can’t get anybody to tell me anything.  I do know the governor is going to declare martial law starting at five tonight.”

“Alaia,” Phoenix said.  “Our perp is one of two people, and Cobb was in on it.”

“Dr. Patrick Carson or Phillip Mercer – and, as far as we know, only Dr. Carson is alive.”

“Do we have enough on him to bring him in?”

“You’re asking if we can get a warrant?  Kinda late for that, right?”

Phoenix rubbed his chin.  “I still don’t know what to make of Phillip Mercer, or whoever it is making us think he’s still alive,” Phoenix said.  “You said there was DNA in his casket, but there was no body.  The guy likes Krystal’s.  And I took a bribe that got delivered in a Krystal’s bag, not to mention that I ate Krystal’s while I sat in jail.”

“I’m not sure about Phillip Mercer being the perp,” Alaia said with a thoughtful look on her face. 

“He has to be involved.”

“Hold on,” Alaia snapped.  “Dr. Cain gave you that picture of the five friends, right?  I was wondering who gave it to him.”  She opened up a file folder and took out the picture and looked at it closely. 

“Fingerprinting won’t do,” Phoenix said.  “But let me see it anyway.”

Alaia handed him the photo. 

“Do you have a magnifying glass?”  Phoenix asked. 

“Right here,” she said.  She pulled open the top drawer of Phoenix’s desk and handed him his magnifying glass, the one he’d bought for himself.

“This belongs to me, by the way,” Phoenix said, and he smiled.  He looked closely at the picture, angling it for better light, then he glanced at Alaia.  He looked at it close to the window, under the table lamp, and then near the closet.   “So, do you want to look up Krystal’s coupons and see if this one is right for the date of the pic?”

“Like I’m working for you now?” Alaia said in a shrill, bossy voice.  Then she smiled.  “Let me see it.”  She took the picture from Phoenix, laid it down on the desk, and brought her face down close to the magnifying glass.  “I can’t see any of the coupon – I mean I can’t see a dark place behind the cloth of Phillip Mercer’s pocket.  Red coupon in a white pocket ought to show through.”

“And the coupon looks flat, right?” Phoenix said with a smile.  “Can you see what I’m talking about? And it doesn’t curve like Phillip Mercer’s chest.”

“I see it.”

  “And there’s something else – the coupon kinda disappears in the corner before it touches the hem of the top pocket.”

Alaia set the photo down.  “Somebody wants us to finger Phillip Mercer – like that’s really going to change anything now.”

“No, you’re missing something, Alaia,” Phoenix said.  “People talented enough to wipe out humanity don’t photoshop clues that badly.”

“You’re saying that---”

“I’m saying that whoever photoshopped that picture
wants
us to know it,” Phoenix interrupted.

“And they always want to be noticed, too,” Alaia said.

“Unless Phillip Mercer is really alive and he wants us to think he’s not behind any of this.  So, for now, that leaves Dr. Cain and Dr. Patrick Carson.”

“Sorry about Dr. Cain,” Jenkins said in calm, clear voice.  “He just up and vanished.  The best we’ll be able to do with Dr. Carson is show up and talk to the receptionist.  And if Dr. Carson refuses to cooperate, that will be that.  But I’m forgetting – he seems to be missing, too, or we can’t get in contact with him.”

“The mayor, then,” Phoenix said.

“Good luck with that, too.  Right now, Dr. Carson could walk out into the street and kill somebody and nobody’d bat an eyelash.”

“But we could walk into his research lab and kill him, if he’s hiding in there, right?”

“I didn’t hear that, Phoenix,” Alaia said, shaking her head.  “And nobody else did, either.  But I keep thinking back to the day you said you sold out to crime – you know, the Robin Hood case and the Krystal’s bag.”

“What I can’t figure out is why he’s going through all this trouble to bail me out,” Phoenix said.  “He warned me about Dr. Demachi and told me my gun had been used to kill him. He told me Demachi was about to get up, and he warned me about Cobb – who I shot dead – and then he got me out of the prison.  All of that by phone, except that he mailed me an old newspaper article about the theft of evidence in the Robin Hood case, and I found a note in my pocket that told me my wife was missing.”

“Cobb must have put that note about your wife in your---”

“I don’t know who else could have – but why Cobb?  Why not a phone call?  Cobb would know he’d never get away with this.”

“Maybe he knew it wouldn’t matter,” Alaia said.  She sat down and motioned for Phoenix to take a seat.  “Here’s what I think happened.  Let’s assume Cobb’s been getting phone calls, too.  Now, the news article you received – that’s from our master mind, whoever he is.  But Dr. Demachi?  Killed with your gun – which you left sitting on your desk.”

“Cobb.”

“And the note in your pocket about your wife – Cobb, too,” Jenkins said.  “I sure as hell didn’t leave you any note.”

“But you could’ve.”

“Yes, I could’ve.”

“So I go to see Tracy, which is what I was going to do anyway, and I end up shooting her.”

“That’s just somebody being mean and nasty so you’ll get tripped up.  Somebody – and Cobb was in on it – wanted you to be to be out of the picture.”

Phoenix stood up.  “Dr. Cain’s missing.  The only two real possibilities are Dr. Carson and---”

“Phillip Mercer might not be dead, Phoenix.  Just like you said, maybe he’s been saving you from Dr. Carson because he owes you big time for what you did for him.  There’s no other explanation.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Phoenix said.  “Now for the final question.  Why would either one of these guys want to kill everybody?”