Time Clock Hero (20 page)

“Hit it, now!”  Alaia shouted, and Beth stepped on the gas. 

The van thumped and skidded all the way to the bottom of the hill.  Beth stopped, hit the wipers, and then turned right.

It was late in the afternoon.  Any attempt to drive straight up to Elm Hill General Hospital in a blood-covered funeral home van seemed undoable.

Nashville’s streets were packed.  Infected congregated in large masses, masses larger than most of Nashville’s biggest churches could boast on a Sunday morning even when a big-name country star was headlining.  And now, straight out of the northeast, a stiff wind, something cold like you’d expect from Valhalla, promised a cold and shivery night.

Alaia couldn’t think of anything worse than being cold and scared except being cold, scared, and wet.  Did you shiver because you were cold, or did you shiver because you were frightened?  Or did you just shiver and pretend you were cold to fool everyone into thinking there was really nothing to be scared about? 

And where at Elm Hill General would the CDC keep Phoenix?  A week ago, Alaia would’ve just left him there to rot – leave him to whoever it was that had taken him.  She’d just drive the van to Franklin, just she and Darkeem, to Dr. Carson Research Lab.  She’d drive up to the lab, bang on the doors with her rifle butt, make a helpless face, and somebody would answer.  The gun wouldn’t matter, probably.  After all, people on the streets needed to protect themselves, right?  But she’d drop the gun, they’d let her in, and they’d do whatever scientists do during times like these. 

“Don’t miss this turn coming up,” Alaia said.  “You see it? Right?”

“You mean Calderon Industries?”  Beth asked.

“Why do I keep hearing an echo?  Yes, Calderon Industries.”

Beth put on her blinker and pulled into the driveway, taking one bite out of two handicap parking spaces.  She noticed her error with a grimace, put the van in reverse, and backed up.  She parked the van in a regular parking space.

“And now we’re farther from the door,” Alaia said.  “And now we’re going to have to---”

Beth snapped her fingers in Alaia’s face and shook her finger.  “Can it, okay?  You asked me to drive and I’m driving. If you don’t like it, you drive.”

Alaia smiled coldly.

“Mom,” Darkeem said.  “You need to relax.”

Beth smiled politically.  “We go in, hang out for a while, and we come up with a plan for getting Detective Malone out of the hospital,” she said.  “The parking lot is empty except for a few of those things, so that means everybody who works here is gone and they probably locked the doors behind them.  You picked as good a place as any, so---”

“So
what
?”  Alaia shot back.

“So, you loosen your sphincter or you’re going to get a bad case of hemorrhoids.”

After a few minutes of sparring, Alaia and Beth decided to drive the van around to the side of the building and back it up to one of the man doors near a loading dock.  Everyone gunned up, chinned up, and shut up the moment the van stopped.  Darkeem, a range-trained marksman with his mother’s weapon, carried that very same gun. 

The doors opened.  Beth and her friend spilled out and covered the sides of the van, Darkeem covered the rear where he could keep his eye on his mother and she on him.

Alaia, with her shotgun raised, aimed to the right of the door lever and, in one shot, blew out the latch.  The door flew open. 

A few Psykotics wandered in from the rear of the property when they heard the gun shot, and they came at a breathtaking pace, flailing their arms frantically like marionettes in a mosh pit.  Darkeem, who knew the effective range of his weapon, waited for just the right moment.  He brought down one of the attackers.  Beth took out the other two.

They unloaded the van in five minutes, just as other infected appeared from the front parking lot.  Beth closed the man door, and everyone put their backs into pushing a large tool cabinet across the concrete floor.  Darkeem hit the lights, and a large workshop appeared before them.  Red tool chests ran across one wall, work benches on the far side, lifts and air hoses running down the center.

Alaia’s phone rang.  “This might be Phoenix, but somehow I doubt it.  Beth, take Darkeem and what’s-her-name---”

“Izzy,” the woman said.

“You take everyone and make sure we’re secure,” Alaia said.  She hit the call icon and answered the phone.  “Talk to me.”  She nodded her head and looked around the room.  “How would you know that?  Alright … No, I believe you, but don’t ask me why … Wait, wait, wait, wait – let me get a pen and paper.”  Alaia pulled a pen out of her pocket.  She found a clipboard with an unused sales slip attached to it on a workbench and she grabbed it.  “He’s in the MRI?  And I’m supposed to … slow down.  I got it – first right, third door to the left straight on ‘til---”

Beth came back into the work area with Darkeem behind her.  “We’ve … I mean, Darkeem has an idea.”

Alaia screwed her mouth up really good and shook her head.  “Just – you guys need to just shut up.”  She looked back at her clipboard.  “No, not you … Sorry about … Nine, tonight?  Through the … yes … how am I going to walk through the … through the … when will you send it to my phone?”

“Duct tape,” Darkeem whispered to his mother.  “Duct tape and pipes.”

Alaia swatted at Beth and Darkeem like they were a pair of horse flies.  “You … how do you control them?  And we all just walk out through the front door … and you’re sure he’s where you say he is … you’re absolut---?”  She took the phone away from her head and looked at it.

“He – the guy – he just hung up?”  Beth asked.  “Detective Malone?”

Alaia just kept writing, scribbling the pen in the margin every few words, trying to get the pen to bleed.  She looked at her phone again and jerked her head back.  “Well, I’ll be a son – daughter of a---”

“Granny ain’t no bitch, Mom,” Darkeem said.  “That’s what you always told Dad.”

“Looks like Mr. Krystal’s getting us in,” Alaia said.  “Beth, where did you say you used to work?”

“Verizon – I managed a team in Murfreesboro.”

“That’s … yes, that’s what I thought I heard you say,” Alaia said.  “So, somebody is sending something to my phone, some kind of file that acts like a password – can that be done?”

“Are you downloading it from a website?” Beth asked.

Alaia, with her eyes looking at the phone, shook her head.  “Now, I would’ve told you that if I was, right?  The guy who just called is sending me all the codes to the hospital.  He says I can walk right in and nobody will ask me any questions.”

Beth’s body posture perked up.  “You mean, somebody is sending encrypted information directly to your phone?  Hospital codes are protected by Homeland Security and---”

“You don’t think I know that?” Alaia interrupted.

Beth crossed her arms and scrunched up her eyebrows.  “That seems kinda funny,” she said.

“What, that I don’t know anything about Homeland Security?”

“Only somebody who knows how to hack Verizon can make that happen,” Beth said, ignoring Alaia’s last comment.  “If he is sending you data – sensitive, government-controlled data – then this person is in control of not only the hospital and government servers, he’s got Verizon, too.”

Alaia tilted her head up and gazed at the fluorescents buzzing above her head.  Then she raised her perfectly-plucked eyebrows.  “And that means what, in layman’s terms?”

“It means that this guy is God.”

“What do you mean ‘God’?”  Alaia asked.  “last time I looked, God spoke through the Bible.”

“Nobody can break into all of those servers in a lifetime, not today,” Beth said.  “It can’t be done.”

“Why not?”  Alaia asked, waiting for a quick answer.  “Hackers can do all kinds of things the rest of us can’t do.”

“Sure, back in the day,” Beth said.

“We’ve got to start moving,” Alaia said.  She looked at Darkeem.  “Duct tape?  You said something about duct tape?”

“We’ve got metal pipes and screw-on caps,” Darkeem said.  “Izzy is cutting and tapping the pipes.”

“Pipe bombs?” Alaia asked.

“On the internet,” Darkeem said. 

Alaia stood there, staring at Darkeem with shock – or maybe it was respect with a little jolt of lightning that made her afraid of what the boy was finding on the web.

“I get to run the drill press,” he said.  “We’ve got enough of that powder to make more pipe bombs than we can carry.”

“How many do we need, Beth?”  Alaia asked.

“Depends on how many watermelons you want to rupture,” Beth said.

“Watermelons?”  Alaia laughed and shook her head.  “Okay, I think I’m finally getting you.” 

Beth grinned and shook her head like a happy bobble.

Alaia was glad to find Izzy – where she’d picked up her machine skills, Alaia never asked – working with a pipe cutter, cutting lengths of pipe to twelves inches, and tapping them so they’d take metal caps on both ends.  But Alaia also noticed Izzy doing something different.  Izzy took each length of pipe and, by using a bench grinder, ground triangle patterns into the pipes, creating lines of weakness.  The pipes would now explode and throw perfectly-sized pieces of diamond-shaped shrapnel in every direction.

Beth rounded up a small, plastic funnel, and Darkeem worked at the drill press, drilling holes through the metal caps.  In the case containing the dynamite, Alaia found a roll of primer fuse, another mystery, because most dynamite was blown these days with primer caps, wires, and an electrical charge.

An hour later, fifteen pipe bombs, all of them twelve inches long and about two inches thick, sat stacked together on the end of the work bench.  Darkeem rounded up disposable lighters, finding them in some of the tool boxes – all mechanics smoked, didn’t they? – and the van was loaded up.

Five minutes later, Beth had the van on the road.  She turned left at the top of the hill onto Elm Hill Pike near the old cemetery, bumping into a few infected, and headed in the direction of Nashville.  She turned off the headlights when the van bumped across the railroad tracks. 

Elm Hill General wasn’t one of Nashville’s largest hospitals, certainly not one of those that catered to the country music hall-of-famers.  Alaia had made a stop here weeks earlier checking out the story of a clerk who’d been shot during an armed robbery.  Seems like he knew the perp, who made off with ten thousand dollars; and the wound in his waist looked like he’d pinched the skin so that the bullet, of a small caliber, would miss his vital organs and pass harmlessly through him, making him look like a victim.  She ended up arresting him.

The parking lot was empty except for a few vehicles, attesting to the fact that nearly everyone had skedaddled once the virus had done its job.  Either they fled the hospital, became infected and infected others, or they got safely away.  The few who remained were CDC and mercenaries.

Beth pulled the van into the far end of the parking lot and Alaia, with her AK, the shotgun, two pipe bombs in a small pack, and a black baseball cap reversed on her head, climbed out.  Liz handed her a box containing a five-pound black powder charge and a stick of dynamite.

“When the lights go down, we get outta town, you got that?” Alaia said to Beth.  “Just drive up to the front, slowly, like nothing’s going on – that is, unless you hear gunfire.”

Beth nodded.

Alaia walked towards the hospital entrance, a tall, three-story glass affair with a row of doors – five sets of doubles – stretching across the front.  Two guards dressed in black sat out front on two metal chairs, drinking beer, playing cards, and laughing.  She stepped up onto the sidewalk, approaching from the right side.  Before they could see her she said, “Halo Echo Lima Lima,” the callout Mr. Krystal had given her.

The two guards jumped up and stood at attention. 

Alaia pulled out her cell phone and held it up, waving it with a smirk on her face.  She kept her eyes glued on the two men, noted that they looked a few years short of twenty-one, and waved her phone in front of the card reader.  The two double doors slid in their tracks, right and left, and Alaia stepped inside.  She looked at the two men and said, “You’d better be watching – there’s a herd of infected out there heading this way.”

The men thanked her.

Alaia shook her head once more and walked into the foyer.   The doors closed behind her.  She stopped and looked up. 
Medical Imaging
.  Phoenix and Dr. Carson were less than two hundred feet away.

She opened the box containing the black powder, lit the dynamite, and ran.

Phoenix woke up, ground into the rough fabric of Ms. Jones long, dark blue couch.  His lower back settled in between two cushions and his right leg dangled over the edge of the couch.  He rubbed his eyes with his right hand and tried to shake himself awake.  The smell of cigarette smoke, harsh and unusually pungent, made him cough.  And he could taste it.

“Thanks, Phoenix,” Ms. Jones said.  “You’re definitely a three cigarette kind of guy.”

Phoenix didn’t seem to remember a thing past the little blue shot, except for Ms. Jones helping him to the couch.  Maybe he would later.  From his standpoint, he was innocent of any wrong doing; and so he knew he remained true to his word that he’d sworn off women for good.  He didn’t need a blow of Oblivium – but thought one would be nice.

Ms. Jones reclined behind her rich-looking desk with her even richer-looking legs crossed and up on the desk top.  She dangled a cigarette in the fingers of her right hand and held a glass of something – maybe bourbon, yes, that’s what she always drank, though in moderation – in the other.  She wore long, black heels.  Either she’d never removed them, or she’d gotten herself dressed.

Phoenix looked down.  His clothes, if they’d been removed, we’re now back in place.  But his feet hurt, so he sat up and looked at his penny loafers.  Bobbie had put them on the wrong feet.  “Gee, Bobbie.  You’re just brilliant.”

“You’re my shining star,” she said, and she blew a cloud of smoke in Phoenix’s general direction.

Phoenix felt something tight in the crook of his right arm.  He reached up and felt it and noticed a bandage.

“We got the blood sample a few minutes ago,” Ms. Jones said.  “So, if you’re ready, I have orders to take you down to the MRI.”  She bumped out her cigarette and swung her feet to the floor with the energy of a teenager.  Most normal women her age would be dead asleep after---

Veronica, Ms. Jones assistant, came in.  Two armed men, maybe the same two Phoenix had seen earlier, came in with her.  They looked as tired as Phoenix felt. 

Ms. Jones stood up and composed her already composed self, and nodded towards an overly-composed Phoenix.  “Take him down to join Dr. Carson, but be nice.  We run more tests in the morning.”

Phoenix stood up and took a deep breath.  His lower back and waist stung, as if Bobbie had used him to sand the couch, and his lips and neck felt like they’d been rubbed raw. 

The two guards nodded Phoenix towards the door.  Just before he stepped out of the office, he smiled a crooked one at Bobbie and raised his eyebrows.  “Totally forgettable.  I can’t seem to remember anything.”

Ms. Jones screamed something primitive and feral, probably an echo of something she’d yelled within the last hour or two while Phoenix lay helpless.  She grabbed a glass paperweight and sent in through the air.  It hit the sheetrock wall, putting a sizeable dent into it.

The two guards flew out of the room.  Victoria followed them, bent at the knees, running, while holding a folder over her head.  Phoenix they’d left behind.  He smiled at Ms. Jones and saluted her, turned around, and walked out of the office.  Then he stopped and turned and looked at Bobbie; and she looked at him. 

For a second he imagined her as the younger woman she used to be, and the thought made him shiver.  She hadn’t always been this way.  There had been times, lots of them, when she was very much alive and fun and ready to run off to wherever just as long as she knew, or thought she knew, that Phoenix loved her.  And she would never ever, not in her wildest dreams – and those dreams were wild, weren’t they? – done anything to hurt him.

Phoenix started to walk back into the office, but the guards restrained him.  He shook his arms free.

Ms. Jones told the guards to wait, and she motioned for Phoenix to come back in and close the door.  She hurried around the desk and threw her arms around Phoenix and pulled him in tightly against her.  “I couldn’t,” she said.  “If I can’t have your mind and your heart, then the other is meaningless.”

“Why put my shoes on backwards?”

“I didn’t.”

“You know, there was a time when I---”

Bobbie put her finger up to Phoenix’s lips, shook her head, and smiled.  “Shhh.  I know.  I was just hoping that … well, it was all very foolish of me.  And I know, Phoenix – I really do.”

Phoenix put his hand on Bobbie’s cheek and she put her hand on his.  After all these years, he still loved her gray eyes; and she hadn’t changed her hairstyle: shaved and up high and now fashionably gray.  “You know, these kids can’t come close to you – and you know I mean that.”

“You never were a good liar,” Bobbie said.  “And yes, I know you mean it – I can see it in your eyes.”

Bobbie pulled away from Phoenix, but she kept her eyes on him.  She walked back around her desk and sat down.

“Neither are you,” Phoenix said, lying.  “I do remember it … you know … on the couch.”

“Sorry about that.”

“I know you are.  How’d you get a job with the CDC?”

“I’m asking myself the same question.”

Someone knocked on the door.  Phoenix turned and looked.  Then he said to Bobbie, “You need to get me out of here – and I need to take Dr. Carson with me.  And you’re coming, too.”

“Carson Research Lab has been overrun,” Bobbie said.  “Why do you think we picked him up?  Sure, he begged us to get him back to the lab – but the CDC thinks he can cure this thing right here.”

“But you’ve got him locked up because he won’t help you, right?”

Bobbie nodded.  She picked up her cigarettes and slid one from the dark green package.  “And that’s what’s funny about all of this.  It’s like he---”

“He’s the guy who made all of this happen?”

“I wouldn’t have thought that,” Bobbie said.  “But now that you say it, it’s possible.”  She lit her cigarette and watched the cloud thicken and rise towards the ceiling.

“I have it on good authority that Dr. Carson can fix this thing, but I have to … I was on my way here to get him, Bobbie.  We have to get him back to the lab.”

“You want a hall pass?”

“The initial vehicle for this … this Psyke Virus, is water,” Phoenix said.  “I know you already know that.  But do you know that this thing is about to go airborne?”

“Not possible.  That’s what I’ve been told.”

“Airborne, Bobbie!”

“And I’m telling you it can’t,” she insisted.  “I have been assured by---”

Phoenix came around the desk and knelt down in front of Bobbie.  She swung her chair around to face him.  “Look into my eyes, Bobbie.  I know for a fact that this thing is about to get uglier than it already is.  I really can’t tell you how and why and why I know this – but you gotta help me and Dr. Carson get out of here.  At least give my phone back to me.”

Phoenix didn’t bother to turn around when he heard another knock, an impatient one sounding more like a rifle butt than knuckles.  He just kept his eyes pinned on Bobbie’s face.  She’d do the right thing.  She always did – or nearly always did except when it came to her love life.  He stood up and walked over to the door and opened it.  Before walking out, he turned to Bobbie and said, “I hope I’ve helped.  Just do the right thing.”

Victoria walked into the office – did she ever set any those manila folders down? – and closed the door behind her.  The guards each took one of Phoenix’s arms and led him through the Sleep Disorder Center, out into the hall, and back onto the elevators.

“You two guys got families?”  Phoenix asked.

The two men didn’t say a word.

“Oh, I get it – you want to put on airs.  Okay then.  You may be tough now, and you may think your families are safe and snug, but this virus thingy is about to jump.  And you know what I mean by jump, right?”  He looked at the guard on his right and then at the one on his left.  “Anyway, when it does, I hope … say, are either of you guys scuba divers?  Because, if you are, I hope you have a couple thousand tanks of air ready.  Know what I mean?”  Phoenix smiled at the guards.  They got onto the elevator.

The elevator jerked and clanged when it hit the first floor, and the doors opened up in the hall near the main entrance.  Men and women, all of them wearing lab coats, hurried back and forth through the lobby, filling it with an undecipherable techno-babble. 

Phoenix just stood in place, waiting for his guards to take the first steps.  Three seconds later, long enough to sit, twiddle, and think about anything, Phoenix stepped off the elevator.  The guards followed him out.  “The MRI room, I think, fellas – and then you’d better start praying.”

The two guards hurried Phoenix through the lobby, making a bee line diagonally towards a set of double doors, and walked through them. Phoenix counted off one, two, and then three doors which opened to the left. The guards took the third one and walked straight down the hall towards another set of double doors.  Then they fobbed their way into a lab.  Another door on the right said MRI and, sitting next to that door, with his head slumped over on his chest, sat another guard dressed in black.  His weapon, an AR-15, was lying on top of a desk.  One of Phoenix’s guards kicked him lightly, and he jumped up, rubbing his eyes.

“Crap, Billy,” one of the guards said.  “You’ll be relieved in an hour.  Just do your job so we can get out of here.”

Billy looked at Phoenix briefly, then his eyes panned the room quickly.  “Why don’t we just go now?” Billy whispered.  “I want to get out of here – let’s just go.  Who’s going to stop us?”

“Just watch the door,” the guard said, and he looked at Phoenix.  “If anybody leaves, shoot them.”

“Like hell I am,” Billy said.  “I’m not killing anybody, so bite me.”

The guard shook his head.  “Just stay awake.”  He looked at Phoenix and motioned for the door.  “No, I wouldn’t shoot you, either.  But I want this paycheck.”  The guard paused and looked into Phoenix’s eyes.  “Is what you said true?  Do you think this thing is going to go airborne?”

The other guard and Billy looked at Phoenix. 

“I think the virus is mutating. When it does, we’re all going to be like – well, you’ve seen them,” Phoenix said.

“Let’s just go,” Billy said, as he picked his weapon up off the desk.

“Your paycheck is going to be worthless after tonight,” Phoenix said with a crooked smile.  “And you didn’t ask for gold upfront?”

“My thoughts, exactly,” the guard said.

Phoenix looked at the door.  “The guy in this room?  He’s got the answers.  But all the puzzle pieces are back at his lab in Franklin.  You may want to look the other way when you feel like you need to be looking the other way.  Know what I mean?”

The guard opened the door and motioned for Phoenix to kindly incarcerate himself behind a door designed to lock people out. 

Phoenix grabbed the lever and flipped it back and forth.  “This is brilliant, utterly brilliant.  Now I know we’re doomed when somebody lets me lock them out.”  He stepped into the room.

The door clicked quietly shut behind him.  Phoenix heard a cough, more like somebody purposely clearing his throat than an actual cough, and he looked over to the right.  A man sitting in a chair near the wall stood up, and he held a pack that looked like the one the guards had taken from him earlier.

“A gift from Ms. Jones,” Dr. Carson said, as he flung the pack to Phoenix.  “You missed her by just a few seconds.”