“What in God’s name is going on?!” the security director screamed at the junior engineer, the sight on the monitors before him having already sent one of his officers scurrying out of the building.
“I don’t know!”
“There’s bodies everywhere! Look!” The security director pointed to the monitors, which received video images from the cameras mounted in every main hallway.
“They’re running for the elevators and dropping. My God, what is this?”
The junior engineer, three years out of Texas A & M, stared at the piles of bodies against what seemed to be every elevator door. “Hit the alarm.”
“What?”
“Shut the elevators down and hit the alarm. Now!”
The security director took care of both directions in only a few seconds. “Done.”
“Are all the emergency systems up?”
“Of course they are.”
“Throw the breakers.”
“What?!”
“Dammit, there’s something spreading around up there, and it’s coming this way. Gas or something.”
The calls were saying something about a strange smell, the security director remembered. In the vents.
“We’ve got to cut the environmentals,” the engineer said. “The only way to do that is to simulate a power failure. The emergency lights will keep the halls and stairwells lit.” If anyone is still alive to need them. “Now. Do it!”
The security director grabbed his keys and followed the engineer to the main breaker panel a few yards away. His key was in the safety lock when the first hint of sulfur snapped his head toward the vent.
“Hurry!” the engineer shouted, taking the keys from his petrified colleague. He pulled the panel open, ignoring the groan and slap of the man falling to the floor, and grabbed the main breaker switch, yanking it away from the wall as his head, inexplicably, snapped backward.
FIFTEEN
Reunion
The first Bureau forensic team arrived at the Royces’ Westlake Village house just as Art’s cell began ringing.
“Jefferson.”
“Art, Hal. Barrish is gone. His family, too.”
Art said nothing immediately, but made a flapping action as Frankie looked to him. He had flown the coop. “Have you gotten inside yet?”
“I’ve got no warrant.”
“Get one. Fast.” Art hung up with the push of a button and started to replace the handset when it rang again. “Jefferson.”
“Get downtown now.” It was Lou Hidalgo.
“What? Why?”
“They may have hit with the nerve gas.”
“No. Where?”
There was a pause. “The World Center, Art.”
Frankie saw her partner’s jaw drop, his chest heave once.
“Wha — what?”
“I don’t know anything more than that, Art. Just get there.”
Art clicked the phone off and tossed it across the front seat, jumping in right behind it. Frankie didn’t need to be told they were leaving.
“What is it?” she asked as he accelerated away from the house, swinging a tight U-turn that made the tires scream.
She’s all right, Arthur. She has to be.
“Art, what is it?”
Art told her through bared teeth as they entered the southbound 101. The rest of the drive was made in worried silence.
“Take the Fifteen,” John Barrish told his youngest son from the backseat.
Stanley silently questioned the reasoning behind that routing, but expressed none of it. He simply obeyed his father’s instruction and slid to the right on Interstate 10, merging onto the long, sweeping transition to Interstate 15.
“Hey, Pop,” Toby said with feigned excitement as they passed under the sign marking the 15 as the choice route to Las Vegas. “We could do some gambling.”
John gave a mild smile in response to his son’s kidding. “I don’t want to take the obvious route.”
Toby’s head bobbed up and down as he looked back from the front seat. Interstate 10 would have been the quicker route across country, but quicker wasn’t always better. “Pop?” Toby offered, holding a bag of chocolate chip cookies over the seat. He got a head shake in response, and shifted his attention to the left. “Mom?”
Louise Barrish, hands resting one atop the other on her lap, mouthed a polite “No” and looked back out the window, watching as the mountains became clearer through the haze. Seeing the first wisps of snow, the lush green hills, the animals meandering through pastures. All the beautiful things. All the good things. All the…
“What are you crying about?” John asked his wife, seeing the tears roll down her face.
Louise looked toward the floor and shook her head. “Nothing.”
Stanley rose up in his seat a bit and leaned toward the driver’s door to get a look at his mother in the rearview mirror. “Mom? You okay?”
“I’m fine, Stanley.”
“She cries over anything,” Toby commented. Especially lately, he thought to himself next. No offense, Pop, but no wife of mine will ever snivel like that.
“I am fine,” Louise repeated, wanting to deflect attention from herself. She knew what unwanted attention elicited from her husband, and the bruise he’d given her that first night back had just gone away. She had avoided any more by simply fading further and further into the background. No challenges, at least none that she could identify as such before letting them slip out. No. It was best to just stay in the shadows. To cook his meals. To keep wherever they were living clean. And to say nothing. Nothing. She felt the tears want to come again, and looked out the window to the beautiful scenery to force the desire from her mind.
“Listen,” Toby said loudly as he turned the volume up on the car radio.
“…the casualties are numerous, and area hospitals are inundated. Initial reports, still unconfirmed, indicate the cause of what can only be called a disaster that began to unfold this morning in the First Interstate World Center in downtown Los Angeles may be nerve gas. We’ll have more on this breaking story next…”
“YEEEEEESSSSS!” Toby screamed. “Pop! Pop! Did you hear that?”
John drew in a deep breath and let his head fall back. “I heard.”
“It worked! They did it!” The niggers were good for something after all! The thought of it made Toby roll with laughter in the front seat.
“We really did it,” Stanley said, though his words were drowned out by his brother’s raucous laughter.
Toby regained his composure and looked to the backseat. His mother was staring out the window, more tears streaming down her cheeks, and his father’s head was still resting on the rear deck. He looked so peaceful. So content. So… “Pop?”
Stanley looked in the rearview. “What?”
“Shh,” Toby said. “He’s asleep.”
Stanley looked back to the road ahead. His father was made of steel, though some would say stone, and others ice. But there was no denying the man was made of something that others were wise to respect… even to fear. Stanley saved a little of both for the man who had given him life.
“Just drive, Stan,” Toby said. “He deserves the rest. It’s been a rough couple weeks.”
“I know it’s been rough.” He glanced again to the mirror and the sight of his quietly weeping mother. “For all of us.”
“Dammit, Frankie,” Art said painfully. “She’s in there.”