"What the–" Prime began, then trailed off. Everyone was panting from exertion and fright. Elder in the front passenger seat, Kevin and Beat in the back. Eydie was straddling the drive shaft in the middle of the backseat, her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands.
"Fuck, that was–" Kevin couldn't finish his sentence.
"That was... that was bat shit!" Beat wiped her eyes before ejecting the magazine from her empty pistol and releasing the slide.
"I don't understand." Strangely, Elder seemed almost calm. "What's going on?" He looked back at the mystified faces in the backseat.
The traffic came to stop at a light. Prime reflexively brought the truck to a halt. As he waited for the light to turn green, he slowly became aware of a group of people, many blocks up the cross street, chasing after a single figure. For a few yards, the lone figure seemed to be outpacing its pursuers, but it slipped and the small mob descended upon him. The assault was distant, down a darkened street, but even from afar it looked disgustingly brutal.
"Fuck this," Prime said, pulling out into oncoming traffic. He revved the engine and blew through the stoplight.
Chapter 24
Jude sat across from Nathan, still wearing the sunglasses even though they were back in the condo and night had fallen hours ago. Arnold sat between them, looking sweaty and haggard. A grainy security camera still sat on the dining table in front of Nathan, but Nathan paid it no attention. It had taken him half a second to identify the man in the shot: a better groomed but still identifiable Elder Tull. Arnold wanted information and Nathan had every intention of giving it to him. This was the third attack Elder Tull had made on Nathan, and he wasn't about to let there be a fourth.
But first, someone was going to explain to Nathan what the fuck was going on.
Arnold looked war weary, like he'd had to fight his way across town to get to the condo. There was blood on his shirt and a gash on his left cheek.
Whatever was going on in the city beyond Nathan's condominium building, it looked bad. The television explained very little. The news coverage was increasingly erratic. There was rioting in the streets, and some peripheral coverage talked about the attack at the Opera House. But more and more, the news anchors were using their platforms to deliver anti-Puke diatribes. Apparently, the chaos was all the result of an intricate, Puke-backed plot. They were hazy on the exact details.
"Just a simple yes or no, Mr. Pope," Arnold said, pointing a sweaty finger at the security still. "This is the second time I've come to you and asked this question: do you recognize this man?"
"Yes," Nathan replied, not taking his eyes off Jude. Everything and everyone had gone crazy – everything and everyone accept Jude. She was just sitting there calmly, smoking her cigarettes. What was her angle? Nathan needed to understand before he made his next move. Arnold, Peters, city security, The Big U... Nathan could understand all those, but Jude... she was a wild card. What was she planning?
"Well?" Arnold raised an eyebrow. He couldn't hide the exhaustion in his voice.
"What the hell happened at the Opera House?"
Arnold exhaled.
"Don't worry about–" Jude began.
"Fuck it!" Nathan screamed, slamming his fist down on the table. Jude jumped. "You want the motherfuckers who did this, you tell me exactly what the fuck they did!"
Jude returned her attention to her cigarette, sucking in, then blowing out a plume of gray smoke.
Arnold spoke up. "It's..." he stammered, searching for the words. "It's fucking pandemonium out there. Rioting, killing..."
"Killing? Pukes?"
"No– well, yes, but not just Pukes... It's like everyone has taken the opportunity to settle all their old scores, silence every grudge they've been holding for years. It's fucking insane, I don't know what the fuck is going on. I had to shoot three people to get over here. They tried to pull me out of my car..."
"All of this chaos because of what this Puke did?" Nathan tapped the photograph.
"No– I don't know..." Arnold shook a weary head. "Maybe they released some sort of virus– I don't know... the sooner we have them in custody, the sooner we can figure out what the fuck is going on. So? How about the picture, Nathan? Huh?"
Nathan contemplated his options.
"Fuck!" Arnold boiled over. "If you know anything about this and I find out you've been withholding information from the authorities..." Arnold seethed through clenched teeth. "Neither this bitch," he pointed to Jude, "nor the Big U can stop me from executing your Puke-sympathizing ass!"
"Yes, that's Elder Tull," Nathan said calmly. "And I can tell you where to find him, I know where he'll be hiding out. There's only one place in this city that he could be."
"Fine!" Arnold almost collapsed forward across the table, a weight lifted off his shoulders.
Nathan told Arnold the location of Prime's Candy Kitchen.
Arnold didn't bother to write it down. He pulled his weight out of his chair, retrieved his security still, and left the condominium without uttering another word. He left Nathan and Jude staring at each other in silence, the full length of the anachronistic dining table between them.
Nathan was the first to speak. "What's going on?"
"You heard Arnold. Perhaps some sort of virus..." Jude replied, distant.
"That's not what I mean."
"Then what do you mean?"
"What are you doing?"
"I already explained," Jude said, annoyed. "The Big U doesn't have your best interests at heart, baby."
"Don't!" Nathan choked back his rage. "Don't pretend that you're still looking out for me."
"Oh Nathan, you know everything we've done has been to protect you!" Jude sounded genuinely hurt.
"Protect me? Protect me from who? You?"
"Nathan!"
"Who's side are you on, Jude?" Nathan asked, rising from his chair.
"There's only one side! Yours! It's a dangerous world, baby. There are so many people who'd try and take advantage of you."
"Like you? Like Peters? Like Arnold? Like Waverly? Try and tell me that all of you haven't been trying to cash in on me. What gives any of you the right to make a penny off of me?"
"It's not like that, Nathan, it's never been like that..."
"It's always been like that! Right from the beginning! You thought you could fuck me, and I'd be your obedient puppy! But you didn't predict any of this, did you?"
Jude fell silent, her eyes still hidden behind the dark glasses. The sound of sirens could be heard far below in the streets outside.
"Nathan. We can't fight, not now. We've got to stay strong, we've got to stay together. If we break apart..." Jude's voice faltered. "If we show any air between us, they'll drive a wedge into it. They'll split us right down the middle. And then they'll eat us alive."
"They? They?" Nathan asked, almost doubling over in physical pain. "Who are they?"
Jude paused, looking towards the windows from behind her dark glasses.
"Them," she said with deadly, absolute certitude.
Chapter 25
The whole world was going fucking insane.
The Wagoneer worked its way home down back street after back street, keeping off the major thoroughfares. Every way they turned, they found roving bands of crazed Stems, either locked in pitched battle or senselessly destroying property. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to any of it, no clear lines to demarcate one set of belligerents from another.
They mostly ignored the slow moving Wagoneer, though any Stem who came within twenty yards caught a bullet from Prime's .44.
Back at the Candy Kitchen and secured in the relative safety of the basement, Prime turned to his computers for answers. The airwaves were mostly dead. What few radio and television stations were still broadcasting had become mouthpieces for anti-Puke ravings. Prime tapped into traffic control cameras and flipped through the feeds from every corner of the city. No neighborhood was free of the rioting. The town was beginning to burn.
<
br /> Even Prime breathed a sigh of relief when a traffic camera relayed the image of the first tank rolling into town. The comfort was short lived, however, as whatever madness or sickness or virus infecting the Seattle population quickly spread to the occupying soldiers. Soon the army was fighting amongst itself and attacking civilians, apparently at random.
The shit was turning from bad to worse.
"Did we somehow cause this?" Eydie asked as she watched the camera feeds over Prime's shoulders. After changing their clothes and reloading their weapons, everyone had gathered at Prime's workstation, searching for answers.
"That's stupid," Kevin dismissed. "How could a video cause this?"
"But it can't be coincidental..."
"They can fucking fly!" Sweet Beat snorted. "Those Stems back at the fountain were fucking flying! We didn't cause anything."
"Are they sick?" Prime was tabbing through a cluster of open windows on his desktop, displaying various angles of the destruction. "Some sort of contagion?"
"Sick people can't fucking fly," Beat repeated.
"Or hear the passing of gas over a hundred yards away," Elder added. "They all heard me burp, remember? All of them. They reacted as a unit, like they were somehow... connected..."
"They did attack..." Eydie chose her words deliberately. "As a pack."
"This is fucking crazy," Beat ran her fingers through her hair in dismay. "This whole thing is fucking crazy. And look: it's spreading! Now, the fucking army is killing each other! We've got to get out of town."
"I think that ship has sailed," Kevin said, watching the monitors. Prime flipped the cameras to the freeway panoramas. "The army is adapting. They're setting up roadblocks." At great distances away from the city, the outlines of armored vehicles could just be seen.
"Then we're trapped here? With the crazies?"
"If it's a virus, it will eventually affect us," Prime mused.
"No, it's no virus," Elder replied, remembering the explosion back by the Arena. "It's the stem. Something has gone wrong with their stems."
"What?" Eydie turned to look at Elder. "What makes you say that?"
"Back at the fountain, I shot one... right in the center of mass. Right in the plug and he... exploded."
"Yeah, you said: Boom."
"Yeah."
"That's impossible," Prime dismissed. "The amount of stored energy required to create a blast of any magnitude..." And Prime's words trailed off as their full weight hit him. "Shit," he concluded.
"Yeah, shit." Elder agreed.
"What are you eggheads talking about?" Beat asked, shuttling her eyes between Prime and Elder, attempting to read something in their expressions.
"I-I-" Elder hedged, shaking his head.
"If," Prime began. "And I mean if the WLI had the capacity to store up energy..."
"Yeah?" Beat pressed.
"And you fractured the device. Well, the energy would be released catastrophically."
"Why the fuck would the stem hold so much energy? And what the fuck does that have to do with them all going crazy?"
"That's just it, the stem isn't designed to store energy at all, only convert electrical energy into nutrients. But if the stem is malfunctioning, who knows how many other ways it might be fucking up?"
"And if even a small amount of that energy," Kevin added, "was released in a controlled bust, down the central nervous system, to the limbs..."
"You'd fry every neuron in your body," Eydie continued.
"Yes, but you could easily leap thirty feet into the air. Or pick a full-sized man up, clear over your head."
Suddenly, the implications of everything they had witnessed outside the Opera House hit home.
"Fuck!" Beat was the first to put it into words. "Super-powered crazies! We are so fucking dead!"
"Super-powered crazy zombies," Eydie corrected. "There's no way the human nervous system could withstand that strain. It'd kill you, even a Stem."
"But nobody out there seems to be falling down dead," Prime observed, still tabbing through the camera feeds.
"Shit, we've got to get out of town," Kevin stated with horror.
#
Prime picked up the broadcast on an emergency channel. It was a looped voice recording, repeating itself at two minute intervals. He only found it by accident, attempting to tune in to the police radio band. The voice was unmistakable, as famous as that of any Hollywood actor: Drew Arrow. The perpetual pitchman of his own commercials, always selling the latest, greatest software product from his multinational company, Arrowsoft. Drew Arrow. The richest, most famous man never to be converted. He voice came out of the radio, low and somber, delivering a simple message to anyone listening. Prime gathered together everyone, pulling them away from their hurried packing, to come listen to the message at his workstation.
"To anyone in the city... to anyone left in Seattle... to any Pukes left alive in the city of Seattle. This is Drew Arrow. If you can hear my voice and understand me, it means you must be one of the few unconverted left. The sickness, it has only stricken the Stems. If you can hear me, you've survived this long. Well done. But the toughest road is still ahead. It is time for us all to leave.
"The contagion is spreading. My people are calling it a Cascade Psycho-Social Terminal Event – geek speak. What it means to you and me is that we're immune. It's only the Stems that are infected. That's the good news. The bad news is that the sickness is spreading. Beyond Seattle, beyond the Northwest. It's spreading like wildfire. Soon, there'll be no safe harbor. All the Stems are affected – all of them. It's time for us all to leave. Drop off the face of the earth, as it were.
"I know you've all heard rumors of Bannock. Let me tell you now that it is a very real place, not a work of fantasy. Individuals with ideas similar to ours constructed it over many years. A safe haven for Pukes to flee to when the Stem world became too oppressive. Well, I imagine they never considered events like the ones we're experiencing, but the nature of the threat is beside the point. The fact remains that Bannock is ready and waiting – ready and waiting for us all. All we need to do is get there.
"And here the road gets rockier. Escaping the city with conditions such as they are will not be an easy task. But take some comfort in the knowledge that you are not entirely alone. If you can escape the city, if you can cross the floating bridge, my estate on Mercer Island is well armed and well stocked. I am ready and eager to extend sanctuary to any Puke who can reach the safety of my home. From there, we'll have resources to flee the city entirely.
"I wish I could simply relay the location of the town of Bannock to you all, but I fear that you are not the only ones listening to this communication. The Stems, those not yet affected by the phage, may still discover a way to contain it. Do not doubt for a second that if these monsters learned the secret of the location of Bannock that they would make every effort to swoop in and destroy it. Always remember that even before the sickness, there was no Stem that could suffer a Puke to live. This, the contagion, has not changed that.
"So, I reiterate: make every effort and all speed towards my estate on Mercer Island. If you can make it there, then we can make it all the way to Bannock.
"May God smile down and protect you all."
#
It was the first glimmer of hope in a dark world. With everything collapsing around them, suddenly the Pukes had purpose. All they had to do was make it to Mercer Island – no more than two or three miles away – and they'd be safe. That they'd have to travel through two or three miles of city streets packed with blood-crazed lunatics hardly entered into their thinking. There was hope.
But no time.
Just as Drew Arrow's message started another loop, Prime's proximity alarms sounded. Someone or something was attempting to enter the Candy Kitchen through the front door. It could only mean one thing: the Stems had arrived on Prime's doorstep. Whether it was the crazies or the actual authorities, the alarms didn't indicate. It was hard to say which was more preferable.
>
A claymore mine Prime had rigged in the front hall detonated above, shaking free a cloud of dust from the rafters of the basement. The Pukes were already moving into action: Sweet Beat had the stairs to the kitchen covered while Kevin, Eydie and Elder gathered whatever bags were easily at hand.
Prime vanished into the rear closet, coming out with some massive package wrapped in yellow plastic. It seemed heavy, but Prime hefted it by sheer force of will all the way across the basement, to the sliding doors that faced out on the darkened ravine. There, he dropped the heavy package to the ground, grunting in pain.
He slid the doors open slightly, then lifted one off its rails and let it fall away into the darkness. He did the same with the second door until there was only air between Prime and the ravine. He turned to the yellow package, attaching two hooks that emerged from each end of the bundle to loops on the door frame and loosening the twine that held the whole thing together.
The package collapsed as the last length of twine came free.
It turned out not to be a package wrapped in yellow plastic at all, but a whole package of yellow plastic bundled together. Prime pushed the mass of the roll out through the open doors, letting it unravel itself off into the night. At the core of the bundle was a bottle of compressed gas. Prime pulled the bottle's zip cord, and the yellow plastic inflated.
Like much of the equipment Prime acquired, he was vague on the details of exactly how he'd come to possess an unused aircraft emergency slide. His plan to use it as an emergency exit from the Candy Kitchen, should the house ever be attacked, was hampered by the fact that the slide was only long enough to reach a third of the way down the wall of the ravine. There'd been no opportunity to test the escape route, the slide being a one-use item.
At the base of the stairs up to the kitchen, Sweet Beat began to fire her gun.
"Move! Move!" she yelled as a hail of bullets tore through the woodwork of the stairwell in response. She dove to the floor, firing up into the ceiling of the basement. The other Pukes looked at each other in confusion. Who would be the first to test out the slide?