”This is hopeless. Hundreds of people have walked through those doors in the last half hour,” Patton said as he watched Phil zip his suit closed.
A woman walked towards him, and three masked children followed her. The smallest of the three was no more than four years old; she was singing and skipping behind her two older and sullen-faced brothers. “Excuse me, ma’am,” Patton said. He had taken out his gold shield and flashed it long enough for her to see that he was a cop, but not long enough for her to see that he wasn’t an L.A. cop. “Can you tell me where your children got those masks?”
“A man was giving them away when we came in.” She turned and scanned the front of the store. “I don’t see him now.”
“Was this the man?” he held up Rider’s work ID photo, and managed to keep most of a murderous rage out of his voice.
She studied it for less than a second. “Yes, he was giving them out to all the children. The stores have been out of them for days.” A look of terror crossed her face. “Is there something wrong?”
“No, this man works for the county, and the masks he’s distributing have a high concentration of fiberglass. We’re worried that some of it might get in the children’s lungs. You should probably take them off.” She stripped off her daughter’s mask, and her sons took their own off. “Just drop them here. We have some people coming to collect them. Can I ask that you wait by your car until our medical team checks them out? It should only take a minute.” Patton smiled as they slowly walked away. Phil walked up to him. “We’re too late,” Patton said.
“I know.”
Chapter 54
He had more blisters now, but he had a mask to cover the visible ones. They had started appearing across the backs of his hands, so he had donned a pair of gloves. His head was hurting, and he guessed that he had only a few hours left. The purified virus worked a lot faster than the native form, but not this fast. You needed a super-concentrated blast to get this bad this fast. He had almost finished distributing the three hundred special masks, and once he was done, he would stroll around the streets of Los Angeles dropping little pieces of death on his way to paradise.
A pair of security guards walked past him for the third time. He didn’t think they were looking for him any more than they were looking for shoplifters, but he didn’t want to take any chances. The infected masks would create a local hot spot of infection, but to seal the city’s fate he had to get the virus airborne, and that meant finding more places like the supermarket.
He smiled under his mask. The bulletin board had been a last-second decision, and a real stroke of luck. Each time the door opened, a blast of wind would hit it, carrying more of the virus into the air. The military had decided that instead of bringing in enough supplies to feed the entire city for a week, they would in the short run use the local groceries, so even after the curfew had started, the military would help spread the virus.
A pair of blond-haired children ran up to him and asked for three masks. Rider bent down to eye level, using them to shield him from a group of heavily armed soldiers who had just marched into the mall. They moved with a purpose, and Rider had a fairly good idea as to what that purpose was. He stayed crouched behind the children as a group of four soldiers passed within an arm’s reach of them. He jabbered on as to how to wear the special masks and made them promise to pass the masks on to someone else when they left the mall. When three more school-aged children appeared, he extracted the same promise from them and finally handed them four of the “special masks.” He straightened up and surreptitiously scanned the area. Four soldiers remained just to the inside of the door, and he could make out at least two more outside. A large group of officials and police breezed through them without as much as a glance. They immediately fanned out through the concourse and started searching the faces in the crowd. Rider felt the net begin to tighten. He crouched down to gather his things as a pair of uniformed officers approached. He had four more masks that he quickly stuffed into his shopping bag and then looked up to find two nuns standing in front of him. He had been so preoccupied with the soldiers and police that he hadn’t even registered their approach.
“Pardon me, but we saw you passing out surgical masks to the children and wondered if we could bother you for some. We care for eight foster children. They’re over at the. .” She turned to point at a shoe store, and over her shoulder he saw with alarm that a woman was pointing him out to a group of police. A man in an isolation suit stared directly at him, and an old familiar pain split his head. The German! He’s the one who betrayed us, he thought. The police began to run towards Rider, screaming warnings and alerts to the rest of the security force. They were at least a hundred yards away, and he figured that he had no more than ten seconds.
“Of course, Sister. I don’t have enough here, but if you could help me bring the rest out from their boxes inside, I would be forever grateful.” Rider pointed to the doors immediately behind him, and the two nuns started to follow him through the doors marked Restricted Access. “I just had an operation on my back and I’m not supposed. .” Rider tried to distract their attention from the shouts of the approaching cops.
“Sisters, stop!” boomed Rodney Patton’s voice, and for a moment, everything in the mall did stop, as every eye turned towards the gigantic black man. He was holding up a large gold police shield in one hand, and a larger chrome handgun in the other. He was breathing hard, but had stopped running. A smaller man in a space suit continued towards them.
The pain split Rider’s head a second time, but he was able to look through it and see Rucker. An expression of confusion crossed his face. Only the German had been able to do that to him, and only the German had known their secrets. Rider closed his mind, just as he did when Klaus Reisch used to hurt him for fun all those years ago. A young Izhan Ahmed, years before he had become Joseph Rider, had tended to the German through his “illness.” He had been away in Rome, with Avanti, on that fateful night seven years ago. Less than a man, but more than a boy, he had come to Libya to learn how to fight, but the sheik himself had felt that young Izhan’s talents lay beyond martyrdom. He had become Avanti’s assistant and learned the ways of the West as the Ukrainian moved through the United States and Europe. He himself had told Avanti of the disaster in the Libyan Desert, and learned from Avanti’s reactions to this stunning blow how to accept the will of God.
The pain hit him a third time and Izhan and Rucker were suddenly sharing the same mind — that strange two-way connection now fully established. Rucker struggled to control him, but he fought back, just as he had done with Reisch. Rucker was stronger, though, a great deal stronger, and Izhan knew that it was only a matter of time before the American had full control. Rider grabbed the closer of the two nuns, pulled the handgun from his jacket pocket, and shot her in the small of her back. She screamed, and Phil’s attention was diverted just long enough for Rider to slip out of the mental stranglehold. Rider pulled the other nun through the doors and slid a crowbar through the handles. It wouldn’t stop them for long, and it wouldn’t stop Rucker at all. Already he had renewed his assault, but it was the best he could do. Through the pain, Rider grabbed the screaming nun by her habit and dragged her up the stairs.
“Move, damn you. Get up, or I’ll shoot you as well!” he yelled into her face after her habit had come off. She climbed to her feet, and he pushed her up the stairs.