6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1 (4 page)

Midnight came. I had worn myself out so I went to the
bedroom department. I flipped the pillows off a model bed, crawled
inside the sheets, and pulled them up to my nose. I had a huge
smile on my face, but I was also worried about that phantom. I put
a fresh clip of darts in my rifle and set it next to me.

Six A.M. came fast. The sound of the front security
gates rolling up made my heart jump. I looked around and saw my
destruction. The first place I thought to go was the bathroom. I
planned on hiding and when shoppers filled the store, I’d just walk
out.

That’s not what happened. I had done so much damage
that the police locked the place down and turned it into a crime
scene. They found me hiding shortly after nine.

I expected a spanking or some form of torturous
punishment, but it never came. My dad cried the whole time he spoke
to me. He told me how stupid I had acted. He knew I was smarter
than that, blah, blah, blah. I stopped listening shortly after
that.

#

Now I chug the vodka, pushing that thought back into
the ass crack of my brain, and gun it all the way to work. The car
spins around corners like it’s on a track. The squealing tires give
me chills. My lane is blocked but the opposite lane isn’t, so I
pass the fucker and flip them off. Good thing it’s late at night
and there aren’t many cars on the road. Otherwise, I’d probably
wrap this car around another and head off to the afterlife with a
passport to hell.

I park the Ferrari a block from the New York City’s
North River Water Treatment Plant. Normally I can be found cleaning
out ducts and replacing old water lines and filters for a living.
Fantastic career, one that impresses the ladies, fo sho.

The guard’s name is Stanford. No relation to the rich
bastards or the university of stiffs. “Hey, Ben. What’s up?” He’s
built like a freight train, but, like me, has eaten his share of
doughnuts. I reach out and put my hand on his shoulder.

“Phew, you’re having some fun aren’t you,” Stanford
says.

I pull out a rag and slap it on his mouth. He only
struggles for a moment before collapsing. “Sorry, Stan.” I drag him
to a side room and lock him inside. Fuckin’ easy!

First, I shut down the additive tank that mixes the
chlorine, fluoride, and food grade phosphoric acid into the tap
water. The tank blades slow and stop. An alarm goes off, so I
hurry. I pull the hand drill out of my pocket and drill a hole in
the top of the tank. I carefully pour the contents of the pill
bottle into the huge water tank and start the circulation blades
again. The liquid spreads throughout the clean water that feeds
millions of homes. Zilla had told me the liquid was a bacteria that
would make millions of people barf their guts out. He told me the
name of the bug, but I stopped listening when the technical stuff
started confusing me.

I pause for a moment. Guilt picks at me and it feels
like someone is sitting on my shoulder wagging their finger at me -
tsk, tsk, tsk. I flick my finger at the imaginary angel, then I
shake my head, scattering my vision and thoughts like shaking up a
snow globe. They’re just gonna get sick is all. This is just a big
fat prank, nothing to feel too guilty about, right? I start shaking
and I feel nausea kicking in. I punch the side of the tank. Oh
shit! That hurt too much. I cradle my knuckles. This’ll be a hell
of an entertaining night flipping through the cable news
channels.

I run back out to the Ferrari, hoping to get some
miles between me and the chaos about to hit New York City, but the
fuckin’ car is gone. I guess my two hours of fun are up.

I
t’s three o’clock in the
morning, and my phone starts ringing. I just got off a sixty-hour
week and am looking forward to a couple of days off. Tonight I’d
dealt with a highly intoxicated man trying to chase down his
ex-girlfriend. When he cut his leg running from me he started
splashing blood on me, yelling that he had AIDS. It wasn’t true,
but it scared me half to death. Just after I took him in there was
a bomb threat at Mt. Sinai Hospital, an attempted suicide at an
apartment on 121 Street, and a large-scale protest in Central Park
that got ugly. I earned a pile of paperwork up to my eyebrows. It
was the shittiest shift I think I’d ever worked in my entire
life.

Still laying in bed, I look at the phone. My ringtone
used to make me smile. Now I just want to throw it out the window.
I instantly think of three charges: littering, pedestrian
endangerment, and destruction of private property.

Damn this Zilla. I am, in fact, prepared for this
call. There’s a game being played and Zilla wants me to throw a
wrench into the whole operation. I didn’t sleep well and my neck is
tense. I clench my teeth. There are times in my life when I feel so
confused I shut down. I can’t tell what’s right or what’s wrong. I
hear two opinions on either side of the political table and they
both make sense. They both say they’re right, but they’re both
diametrically opposed to each other. One has to be wrong, doesn’t
it? What do you do when you can’t do anything, when you feel
hopeless and lost and are on the verge of tears?
You answer your
phone.

“Hana here,” I answer, trying to sound professional,
but inevitably sounding like a twelve-year-old girl talking to a
boy for the first time.

“We have some serious problems. We need you to get to
the station as fast as you can. I’m calling you cause I can’t get a
hold of anyone else. Five guys already called in sick. The shit is
hitting the fan and I’ve got no officers! Precinct 28 is a ghost
town! Dispatch is flooded.”

I hop out of bed, pull my underwear out of my butt
and sprint to the bathroom. I thought it would be Zilla. Luckily, I
know not to use the tap water. I flip on the light. I look like
shit. Age seems to have beaten up my skin over night. I stretch my
skin tight at the edges of my eyes, temporarily smoothing my crow’s
feet. When did these wrinkles get so deep? I grab a bottle of water
intentionally left by the sink and wash my face. I slip out of my
nightshirt and into a sports bra and some comfortable panties. I
pull on an undershirt, then my vest, and finally my police uniform.
I take my weapon out of my safe, cock it, and then slide it into my
holster with the safety on. I grab my necklace off the bathroom
counter, secure it around my neck, and slide it under my vest. Then
I take a moment to cover up the bags under my eyes with powder, add
mascara, and then wrap my hair into a bun. I cinch the bun tighter
until I feel the pull on my scalp. The bit of pain distracts me for
just a moment.

I’m out the door in ten minutes. I slam my door as
hard as I can. I can’t help it. Anger whips away the anxiety like
an ejected shell casing. Today might be the worst day of my life.
People are running down the street. The radio is lit up with
chatter. I flip on my lights and push through the crowd. Some
people are yelling at me. Others are holding rags over their
mouths. Something slams into my car. A civilian is screaming at me.
I’m ordered to disregard. FM and AM radios are down as well as cell
towers, but I’ve got a ham radio. It was issued by Homeland
Security and set to the Emergency Broadcast Channel. A looped
recording is all I hear. I turn up the radio, trying to catch some
details before I get to the station.

Around one o’clock that morning people had started
flooding the hospitals, sick as dogs. Thousands of people had been
debilitated. The hospitals were overwhelmed in a matter of minutes,
and the sick had just kept coming. On top of that, a computer virus
had corrupted twenty-six satellites and some cell networks in a
matter of minutes, which brought military and civilian
communications to a halt. Our station’s computers were down. We
were blind. Our response time blew up in our faces.

Now, we’ve got officers getting sick and not
responding. I’m not sick, but even if I were, I’d go in. It’s my
duty, above all else, to help save lives. Sick people and sick
computers a coincidence? No.

This guy named Zilla contacted me last night. He
claimed he was a whistle blower embedded in the CIA. He said the
CIA, Feds, and Homeland Security were playing games with people’s
lives. He said that what was coming would be the ultimate war game,
unlike any other they had played before.

“
If you think we would have gotten into the
Vietnam War without the Gulf of Tonkin incident, then you need to
revisit some history books. The CIA faked an aggressive act by the
North Vietnamese to get the public angry. And they did it on 9/11
too. The ‘powers that be’ knew about the attack, but looked the
other way, allowing it to succeed, effectively getting the public
in the mood for the Iraq invasion.”

Zilla also told me that Homeland Security is trying
to justify an attack on the newly discovered oil reserve in the
mountains of Sudan. It is the largest, deepest oil reserve ever
found on the planet. Some say it was formed three billion years ago
and could keep the U.S. flush with oil for the next two hundred
years.

We can’t let the manipulation happen again, Zilla
said. He’d confided in me because of my involvement in the
Richardson case last year. Richardson was the Deputy Chief of the
New York PD and as dirty as they get. He had six subordinates,
including two Lieutenants and one detective, that all took bribes
from Russian Gangsters who smuggled pharmaceutical meds from
Canada. I was the lucky responder to a deal gone bloody, but one
dealer wasn’t quite dead. He spilled it all to me in his dying
breath. So I set up a sting and took all the crooked cops to jail.
When the panic settles down I’ll help Zilla do the same.

A car careens off the road and smashes into the lobby
of a high rise. A fireball erupts from the car throwing a woman
into the road. I swerve around her. It takes every ounce of
self-control not to stop and help her. I flip channels on my Ham
radio and find a dispatch signal. They redirect me to the entrance
of the Queensboro Bridge. A mandatory government quarantine is in
effect. The bridges are being closed so no one can escape the
island. There are lots of cars heading in the same direction as me
and it’s the middle of the night. They’re trying to evacuate and I
can’t blame them.

Someone jumps in front of my car. I slam on my
brakes. Now I’m surrounded by people, angry people. They’re banging
on my windows. When the man in front of me refuses to move I push
forward slowly.

“Go home! Martial law is in effect.” My voice is
projected by speakers under the hood.

As I turn onto 59th Street heading to the onramp of
Queensboro Bridge, a group of Humvees and two Bradley fighting
vehicles force me off the road and pass. They are ramming other
cars and anyone that doesn’t move. I wonder if this is some dream,
but it isn’t. I think of my family. I’m glad they don’t live in the
city. I think of my best friend, Mira. I try calling her, but the
cell towers are down.

I drive on the shoulder to the onramp and push my
cruiser passed lined up cars, blaring my horn raucously. I arrive
at the barricade and pull in tight against the other two patrol
vehicles. I leave my lights on, but switch off my sirens. I pop my
trunk and arm myself with my M-4. I walk the short walk to the
barricades. I glance over the edge of the road. There are a mass of
cars clustered at the lower entrance. A crowd of people have gotten
out of their cars and are trying to cross the bridge on foot. I nod
to Officer Denton, who opens the barricade to let me through. Two
other officers arrive on foot. They couldn’t get their cruisers on
the onramp.

A man in a black jumper with a do-rag on his head
approaches us. “What the hell is going on?” He yells. More people
were joining him. “You gotsta get out of my way, Po Po!”

“Go home!” I reply.

“Come on! I gotta get to my baby! She’s just over
there in Woodside! You can’t keep us here, yo!”

“Yeah!” echoes another man in the crowd.

“If I was you, I’d be at home taping my windows up
with plastic and hovering over the TV, watching the emergency
broadcast system.” Denton yelled then coughed.

“I live in Brooklyn, foo! You won’ let me go home!”
The man in the do-rag yells.