Time Clock Hero (24 page)

Carson Research Labs was located south and west of the small, usually traffic-jammed town of Franklin, Tennessee.  During any workday, which seemed to include weekends, traffic through the Cool Springs Mall area crept along like the CMA awards on cough syrup and a used crutch.  That so many cars and trucks had been left in the streets and parking lots was no big surprise, given the outbreak of the virus.  The only thing different between today and any other day – and this made Phoenix smile – was the lack of exhaust fumes and noise.  It was almost as if he were walking through a concrete and metal jungle, enjoying the silence that was broken only by huge, black crows fighting over the dead.

The sound of the truck’s engine, throaty and staccato, seemed to shake the air around him as he downshifted coming into a small, now-permanent traffic snarl.  He slowed the rig considerably as he approached an intersection, the last one before the open road out of the shopping areas.  He drove around the car pileup by driving up onto the curb and through a magnificent planting of yellow and blue flowers.

He felt warm, even with the windows rolled down; and he felt a tinge of panic, and just a tinge, flit through his body like a ghost.  It shot from his brain to his feet in less time than it took for him to blink, returning the same way it came.  He reached up and touched his right shoulder, feeling the frayed fabric, torn through to his skin.  But his fingers showed him only a small bit of blood.  He wondered how long he’d last before the full onset of the Psyke Virus and how long before he, like the others, became bird bait or killer. 

Phoenix stared straight ahead, slowing for the sharper curves, maintaining a marginally faster rate of speed on the straight, open road.  The CDC would hear the truck coming, no matter what.  At first, the soldiers would probably hold their fire, thinking perhaps it belonged to the CDC and that it might contain supplies and equipment.  But they’d call it in on their walkies and they’d be told that no such truck had been ordered.  The soldiers would either fire on the truck, aiming for the driver, or they’d motion for it to stop and send it back the way it had come.  Phoenix settled on the former.

His phone, plugged up to the cigarette lighter, warned him of an incoming call.  He picked it up, unplugged it, and looked at the number.  Phillip Mercer.  Maybe this would be the last time.

“I knew you’d call,” Phoenix said.

“It’s the little things in life that make you smile, Phoenix,” Phillip Mercer said.  “But I think you’ve figured some of that out by now.”

“Why do I not hate you?”

“Give it time.  You’ll have plenty of it.”

“There isn’t any time left, you said so yourself.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Phoenix had a gut feeling that now was the time for confidences, that Phillip Mercer would finally put a stop to all of the evasiveness, all of the mystery, and start answering questions.  This little journey, behind the wheel of this big truck, a truck loaded with hundreds of infected, all of them with their teeth-chattering, led to the end of the road in more ways than one.  Whatever role Phillip played in this apocalypse – and he knew this guy was more than just his guardian angel – Phoenix knew the truth, or the confession, must come now.  Criminals could never go quietly into the night unless they’d first raged against the dying light, shaken their fists at whatever it was that had twisted and deformed them.

“You died forty some odd years ago, Phillip, didn’t you? Back at St. David’s.  I mean – yeah! – you still had a body.  But you kinda just died all inside.  But your body.  It died four years ago.”

Except for a slow, rhythmic breathing sound, there was nothing but silence.

“How do you do it?” Phoenix asked.  “You really aren’t breathing, but I can hear and almost feel the wind from your lungs.”

“Your guesses are coming along nicely.”

“You saw them, didn’t you?”

“Saw them?”

“That night, in the back if Eric Sawyer’s BMW.  You hated them after that – Eric for seducing her, Mariela because she went along with it.  It’s a shame that nobody except you and I will ever know that.”

Phillip Mercer remained silent.

“Eric dumps her right after their little stint in the back seat, doesn’t look at her or speak to her for a few days.  But he feels bad, feels like he’s nailed himself to a cross – just the feeling a Bible major has after he does what he did.  But he goes up to her room to work it all out, doesn’t he?  He tells her he loves her and she feels the same.  She wants to do the right thing, too.  And the Psyke drug?  Mariela didn’t need it.  Eric never used it.”

“I will have to say, Detective Malone, that … that your guesses---”

“But you knew Eric was on his way to the dorm, didn’t you?  He must have told you.  You hated Eric so much that you followed him that night and you pumped him good.  Five bullets, wasn’t it?  But only one for the girl you loved because you could only kill her gently.”

“And so the world will burn in the fires of hell, just as it was meant to,” Phillip said.

“If there’s anyone left.”

“Oh, there’s plenty of people left.  The Psyke Virus – which is Dr. Carson’s own brew, so-to-speak, can only go so far.”

Phoenix had come to the end of his guessing.  His taunting of Phillip Mercer had paid dividends beyond his wildest dreams, but not nearly enough cash to retire on.  He bit his lower lip and shook his head, knowing that the larger picture still eluded him.  But Phillip Mercer, much to Phoenix’s everlasting delight, plowed ahead, probably thinking that Phoenix had unraveled more of the tangled wire than he actually had.

“And without you, Detective Malone, I would never have had the funds to start, let alone finish my life’s work.  Without you, justice would have come to a fair but disappointing end in that small college dormitory.”

“Without me?”

“A bag of Krystal’s burgers and pups was a small price to pay for one hundred million dollars, wouldn’t you agree?”

“A lot of people were helped by that – I thought you were a saint.”

“No, Phoenix, an angel of death sent by God to do his work.  You are no Judas, Phoenix, you are the voice in the wilderness making straight the path of the destroyer.  Death and destruction follow in my path, and all but a few will find the gates that lead to life everlasting.  Be grateful, Phoenix – I am not allowed to kill you with the fire that is coming.  But all the others?  They have turned away from God.  Their reward is as God has always said it would be.”

Phoenix felt the blood drain away from his face, felt a sudden coldness, deep and chilling, crashing over him like the wave of a tsunami.  He shifted in his seat, gripping the steering wheel with increased pressure until the strength in his hands gave out.  He suddenly felt sick and, had there been a spot to do so, he would have hurled all over the cab.  He fumbled for this Oblivium inhaler and found it. “Fire?”

“So, you are gently rebuked, Detective Malone,” Phillip Mercer said.  “You understand now the consequence of every action, however small and insignificant.  Your tiny act of kindness towards me and all of those poor people, who did get something, by the way, has paved the way for the second single greatest event in world history.”

“What … what happens at midnight, Mr. Mercer?”

“At midnight, at exactly twelve – and I wish you could see it! – the atmosphere itself, the very air you breathe, will become fuel and it will ignite like the fumes of gasoline.  Everything on the earth, from one pole to the next, will turn into ash.  God’s justice, Phoenix, will rain down fire.”

“You’re a mad man.”

“And you, my dearest, dearest Phoenix, are my benefactor.  But your work is not yet done, my wayward son.  So, let me ask you – how does it feel knowing that you have had no small part in the end of the world as we know it?”

The call ended just as Phoenix came to the last turn in the road.  He hit the brakes, but gently, and slowed the rig down, bringing it to a full stop.  He squeezed his eyes shut and laid his head on the steering wheel, bumping it gently up and down.  He remembered the inhaler, lifted it to his lips, and he swore.  Without taking a hit, he ripped the drug container from the mouthpiece, threw it onto the floor, and crushed it with his boot.

He turned when he heard someone knocking on his window, and he saw Alaia.  He looked at her for a moment, and then he motioned for her to get down.  He opened the door.  “Just thinking,” he called down to her, dismissing the concern he saw in her face.  Dr. Carson came up right behind her.

“Listen, Detective Malone,” Dr. Carson said, talking above the sound of the truck’s idling motor.  “I couldn’t tell you any of this earlier, but now it needs to be said.  Without you … without you, Phoenix, nobody lives.”

Phoenix climbed down.  He held his hands up with his palms facing out, and he shook his head.  “You mean because of me, everybody dies.  I … I really don’t want to know anything else at this point.  I get it.  I caused this and I’m going to have be the one to---” 

“I’d agree with you,” Dr. Carson said. “Phillip Mercer is the guy pulling the strings right now and we must do things his way.  But I’m telling you that, if you want to ever see your wife---”

The sound of a vehicle’s horn, something high, tight, and Toyota, came from up ahead and to the left. 

“My wife is dead!” Phoenix screamed.  He stepped forward and grabbed Dr. Carson by the front of his shirt.  He looked into his eyes and said, “Don’t you think I’d do anything to turn back the clock?    Or do you think I’m happy about it?  Answer me!”

Dr. Carson jerked himself away and pushed Phoenix so hard he hit the truck and lost his balance, falling down to the ground.  Dr. Carson bent over and pulled him up to his feet.  He slammed him against the truck one more time for good measure.  

The sound of the car horn, whimping away at itself as inoffensively as it could, was getting closer.

“You can’t turn back the clock, Detective Malone!”  Dr. Carson yelled.  “But you can sure as hell do something to make sure it keeps ticking after midnight, after zero – and you’re the only one who can do it!  If you want to see your wife again, you’re going to have to man up and get this damned show on the road!”

“Why am I the one---?”

“There is no time!” Dr. Carson yelled.  He turned to Alaia and yelled for her to get back into the Jeep.  “Once we’re inside, you’ll be part of the picture.  Phillip Mercer – and he will pay for his crimes – has made it so that, without you in the system, my system, it will never run.  Without you, everyone expires permanently – all of mankind.  If you care to know, Chief Cobb came to get you, like I took Darkeem, and plug you in – you were getting too close and we couldn’t have that.”

“My wife.  She’s---?”

Dr. Carson nodded and smiled.  “Yes.  Alive and so is Darkeem, June Buckner, and Albin Demachi – not to mention all of the kids I’ve found homes for and---”

They could hear the sound of a car sliding in gravel, speeding along the road, coming closer.

“Just get this done before Phillip Mercer lights the match,” Dr. Carson said, and he hurried back to the Jeep.

A white Toyota Camry came speeding around the corner just as Phoenix climbed up into the driver’s seat.  It took the turn wide, sliding off the road and taking out a few small cedars like they were needles in a pin cushion.  Two armed men, both in fatigues, sped by so fast that they barely seemed to notice the truck.

Phoenix felt for the parking brake.  All he had to do was release it, put the truck into first, and drive.  A conscious decision, a will to move forward, not only with the program, but with his life – and the lives of whoever was waiting in Carson Research Labs – was what he needed to make.   Tracy was there.  He knew there’d be no guarantees, no surety that what he was about to do wouldn’t end in his own death.  He could die now or die at midnight.  Or he could live.

Phoenix Malone, with no thought to himself, thought only of his wife.  He released the brake, put the truck into first, and stepped on the gas.

Phoenix, sitting behind the wheel of the truck, was struck by the beauty of the Tennessee countryside in March.  He rolled down the windows and breathed deeply, appreciating the scents and fragrances that seemed to fill the air around him.

Everything would be okay.

He smiled.  He could feel for the first time in however many months.  Anger and rage first and foremost; but those gave way to a sense of duty and love, both of them shot through with sorrow and a strong desire to make things right.  And Phoenix, here at the end of all things, had no intention of embracing anything remotely like the end.

He checked the rearview mirror.  Alaia followed behind him at a distance.  She’d stop just before the turn, wait for Phoenix’s signal – the truck’s horn would be hard to miss – and then she’d make a mad dash towards the entrance to the lab.  Hopefully, he’d plow her a path to it.  But nothing ever worked out right: not on stakeouts, not on stings, not on anything.  Heck, even NPD’s payroll messed up sometimes.

Phoenix looked out through the rearview mirror and he saw Alaia.  She saw his face in the mirror and she waved.  He watched her drop back slowly as his rig approached the turn, and he reached over and felt for his shotgun.  Alaia had loaded up the sixteen-round drum magazine with what was left of the double-aught buck, or with the lawnmower blades, as she called them, telling him he’d be able to mow down anything stupid enough to step in front of him.

The truck, loaded up with angry, snarling, Psyke Virus-infected walking corpses, roared coming out of the turn.  Phoenix shifted again and again, bringing the big rig up to speed, hitting forty miles per hour on the straight drive leading into Carson Research Labs.  The engine roared, deep and throbbing.  Black smoke poured through the smoke stacks leaving a greasy, trailing cloud behind him.

Up ahead, Phoenix could see the CDC vans, maybe five or six, and a number of smaller vehicles – pickup trucks, cars, and a few motorcycles.  No perimeter had been set up.  There were no barricades and not so much as a single truck had been set up to block access to the parking lot.

Phoenix couldn’t count the number of CDC personnel he saw, but none of them had their weapons ready.  All they did was turn and look, surprises on their faces, when the huge Kenworth came roaring into the lot.  Phoenix smiled because he’d surprised them, and he drove straight for them, hitting a pickup truck first, and then a group of five men who flew into the air like rag dolls being carried along in a hurricane. 

Phoenix turned the truck hard to the right, felt it sliding and roaring on the asphalt, and braced himself for impact. 

The truck, almost in slow motion, and in a squeal of smoking rubber and groaning metal, tipped over.

Phoenix was strapped tightly into the seat.  He felt his body being thrown to the left with a force he couldn’t overcome.  His hand gripped the steering wheel as tightly as was humanly possible.  His head jerked to the left, and he felt himself being slammed against the driver’s side door; and he could hear the grinding of metal, bright and shiny, full of sparks, and he could hear the sizzle of heat and abrasion.  He closed his eyes, still holding onto the wheel, and he listened to the terrifying screech as the truck slid across the asphalt.  Then a crash, hard and loud, and then another, jolted and shook him as the truck slammed into parked vehicles.

The truck must have stopped; but Phoenix knew nothing of it.  His head rang and he felt a sharp pain, like a hot knife, piercing his left shoulder.  He could taste his own blood, salty and thick, filling his mouth.  His body felt weak and shaky as he fumbled for the seatbelt release.

Phoenix looked around the cab with the world spinning wildly around him.  The front windshield hadn’t shattered, a plus when he thought about the infected now filling the parking lot, and the truck hadn’t caught fire.  He found his shotgun jammed under the passenger seat and he worked it free.

His hearing, muddled by the roaring in his head, began to clear; and he could hear shouting and gun fire.  He struggled upwards as quickly as he could, using the steering wheel and dashboard like rungs on a ladder.  He stuck his head out through the passenger window above him.

He turned towards the front of the lab.  The bed of the truck, now missing most of its panels, had come within twenty feet of the front entrance of Carson Research Labs.  A car, bent and twisted, had come within inches of breaking through the glass.  A number of infected littered the area, some of them missing arms and legs, and their bodies squirmed and moved in one large, shimmering pool of blood.  Phoenix saw some of the soldiers mixed into the mess, guessing they had been killed by the impact of the truck.

Phoenix turned when he heard a large volume of gunfire followed by an exploding grenade coming from the left rear of the toppled truck.  He lifted himself up and looked out across the parking lot, now a lake of damaged vehicles.  Some of the cars burned, and the place looked little more than a zoo filled with wild animals.  Though it seemed to him that fewer of the infected had survived the truck’s landing, it also struck him that what remained of the CDC was an equal match.  He could see the soldiers with their backs up against the underside of the flat bed, firing point blank into the swarming masses of infected.

Phoenix crawled back into the cab and sounded the horn.  The deep, ear-splitting, monotone note rang out in five long blasts and seemed to shake the fillings right out Phoenix’s teeth. 

Alaia and Dr. Carson would be arriving in little under a minute, and Phoenix would have to be on the ground, in between the trailer bed and the front entrance to protect them.  He crawled up and out of the cab with his shotgun in his hand, and carefully climbed down onto the asphalt.  So far, the soldiers, CDC, and Psykes were on the other side of the truck, both engaged in battle, tooth and nail, locked and loaded.  Phoenix, now on the ground – or was it ground beef? – was up to his ankles in blood and gore. 

The only civilized place anywhere near the front of the lab happened to be the pile of truck bed panels.  From there he’d be able to flag down Alaia who, at just that moment, came speeding into the parking lot.

The Jeep slowed down as it neared.  Alaia dodged a few bloodied infected and a few smashed cars.  The gun battle roared on, hot and heavy, but not a shot had been aimed at the Jeep.  Phoenix popped off a few rounds at a couple of malformed heads, and then he held the gun up, waving it like the flag at Iwo Jima.

Alaia saw him and drove towards him, crushing a few scattered bodies.  She hit the brakes and the Jeep slid when it rolled over a dead soldier, coming to a stop within a few feet of Phoenix.  Alaia jumped out, swinging her AK out in front of her.  Dr. Carson, seeing that several infected staggering towards his side of the car, slid across the front seats and climbed out through the driver’s side door.  Alaia raised her weapon and, without skipping a beat, surgically implanted bullets into the heads of each of three infected.

Dr. Carson hurried over the debris and the dead, holding a card in his hands.  Alaia watched his back, telling him to hurry.  The gun battle on the other side of the truck began losing its intensity.  Either the shooters were running out of ammunition or the infected were winning.  None of that mattered now. 

“Has the door been damaged?”  Dr. Carson asked, as he held his card up to the reader.

Phoenix turned around.  Two infected, one with a shattered arm that looked more squashed than shattered, slid their way towards him through the wet, sticky pudding covering the walk.  He raised his shotgun and fired, taking down the two ex-citizens.  “Any day now!”

Alaia swung right and rattled off another three rounds. 

“I … I don’t understand,” Dr. Carson cried.  “Maybe the CDC was trying to hack it!”  He waved his access card in front of the small, black reader over and over again.  “There’s … this is the only way to get in!”

“Can we shoot the glass?” Phoenix asked.

“Bullet-proof.”

More infected, coming faster than before, came around at either side of the truck.

“Alaia!” Phoenix shouted.  “Can you hold it together over there?  Maybe for a few seconds?”

“No!”  She shouted. 

“Good!  Give me thirty seconds!”  Phoenix took out three more infected, popping them one right after the other, and ran back through the blood towards the truck cab.  He’d heard a grenade, hadn’t he?  One of the soldiers, or maybe all of them, must have been carrying them on their web gear.  He ran past the cab and looked to his right – more infected, lots of them – and he shot another two.  The rest of them, preoccupied by a soldier holding himself up off the ground, barely out of their reach, weren’t moving from their places. 

Phoenix waded into the crowd – heck, he was bit already – and he used his shotgun butt on the backs of the infected.  He screamed at the top of his lungs and then pulled away.  A few turned around and glanced at him with their blood-red eyes as if they were sizing him up.  But they didn’t take the bait, didn’t come for him.  He called up to the soldier, a young girl, with long red hair tied back into a ponytail.  “Hey!  Do you have grenades?”

“I … I’ve got two,” she yelled.  “But I can’t get to them.”

Phoenix raised his shotgun.  Thirty or forty infected, maybe more, stood between him and the girl – the others, for some reason disinterested, wandered aimlessly in the parking lot behind him.  He slung his shotgun and grabbed an infected person, turning it around, looking at it, yelling in its face, but it showed no interest.  He ran back to the cab, climbed up on the passenger’s side, and made his way up and onto the edge of the trailer.  He sat down, straddling it, and hurried towards the rear of the trailer as quickly as he could, tearing his pants open at the crotch. 

“We don’t have much time!” Alaia shouted. 

Phoenix heard more gunfire coming from behind him, and he could see and smell the smoke from Alaia’s gun barrel.  When he reached the girl, he leaned out and over the edge.  “Can you take my hand?”

“I don’t know!” the girl yelled.  “I’m slipping – grab me, mister!”

Phoenix let go of his shotgun and it hit the asphalt behind him.  He could see the grenades on the girl’s shirt, hanging right there in front of him within arm’s reach.  He could just take them and let the girl fall.  She was CDC, wasn’t she?  It would be easy.

But this girl was someone’s girl.

Phoenix grabbed one of her arms using both of his hands, digging his nails into her soft flesh, and he dragged her up to the side of the trailer bed.  The girl raised her other hand up and gripped the edge of the trailer.  With Phoenix’s help, she pulled herself up, lost her balance at the top, and fell down to safety on the other side.  She crashed down onto the trailer panels and struggled to get up.

Four of five infected closed in on the girl, but Alaia was ready.  She fired her gun, taking out the infected with the last rounds she had.  Then, in a fit of rage, she threw her weapon at the others that now began to appear.

Phoenix slid down to the ground.  He threw Alaia his shotgun and grabbed the girl.

Alaia swung into action, her weapon spewing hot fire and ball bearings point blank into the seething masses of inhumanity.  “We ain’t gonna last here, Phoenix – so get on with it!”

Phoenix looked at the girl closely.  “We need into this building, and I mean right now.  You have grenades – time to use them, got it?”

The girl, shaken up, with tears in her eyes, sniffled.  She looked back at Alaia and then she removed a grenade.  “Everybody back!”

Alaia backed up, reserving her shots, stepping carefully over the bodies and debris.

The young girl pulled the pin on the grenade, holding the spoon in place as everyone hurried towards the cab of the truck.  She released the handle, placed the grenade against the base of the window nearest the door, and ran.  Just as fifteen, maybe twenty infected neared the door, the grenade popped.  The glass shattered into a hurricane gust of glittering ice.  The infected, half of which were killed outright, were either dazed or lying on the ground.

Phoenix led the way, hurrying through the body-strewn battle zone.  Dr. Carson, Alaia, and the young girl followed him into the building.  They looked back as they ran, hoping the infected had not followed them.

Dr. Carson, trying to catch his breath, stopped everyone when they reached the end of a long hall.  He opened a door, the door leading to the break room, and he led them inside.  He locked the door behind him and walked over to the drink and snack machines.  “We’ve got a minute or two now,” he said.  “So dinner is on me.”