Darkness Falls (25 page)

"Let go of him!"

He did as she said and the unconscious man slid to the floor. Jenna slowly disengaged from him, keeping one arm around his neck until she was sure his surrender wasn't just a ploy.

Beamon scooted back against the wall, listening to the shouts and pounding coming from the other side of the door. Erin didn't seem to hear the racket, though, and turned toward him. Only a chair and a 120-pound woman were between them now, which wasn't terribly confidence inspiring.

"Mark says he didn't have anything to do with this," Jenna said. "And I believe him."

The rapid rise and fall of Erin's chest began to slow and Beamon tried to shake the remaining cobwebs out of his head, but succeeded only in spattering the wall next to him with his blood. He smiled painfully. "Do you feel better now?"

"What the fuck are you grinning about?" Beamon shrugged. "It never occurred to me that you'd win."

Chapter
34.

Michael Teague eased the van forward another two feet and came to yet another stop. Behind him, the line of cars they'd been sitting in for the last eight hours extended as far as the eye could see. In front, though, the Canadian border was tantalizingly close. So close, in fact, that he didn't bother turning his engine off and instead left it idling wastefully.

It had taken two weeks to complete a drive that they should have been able to do in a single push. Of course, the blame for that was primarily Udo's, but his failure to keep the van's tank full had turned out to be only the beginning of their problems.

With Erin Neal in custody, it was almost certain that Jenna was also in the hands of the government. She would never leave her beloved Erin to suffer a fate meant for her. And if that was the case, Teague had to assume that the authorities knew all about him and the Metzgers.

So now they had to worry about being recognized, which forced them to use the back roads where police were scarce and supplied with only enough fuel to react to emergencies.

That made getting their own fuel much more difficult. Now eBay had a section dedicated to the trading of gasoline and other petroleum products, but in rural areas, people needed their fuel rations to cover the distances necessary to live. And even if you were able to find sellers, they were often many miles away -- creating a situation where you had to use a half a tank of gas to buy a full tank of gas.

"Another one," Udo said, pointing through the windshield at a car pulling past the border station and being directed to return to the United States.

The escalating cultural tension between America and Canada, combined with the fact that most Americans were crossing the border just to buy gas that they'd take back and sell, had caused a steady tightening of border security. Two days ago, though, there had been a shooting at a Canadian gas station by an American citizen and it had been the proverbial last straw. In the time they'd been waiting to cross, about four out of five cars had been turned back.

The truck in front of them pulled up to the gate and Teague watched the border guard lean in the window. No more than thirty seconds went by before he motioned the driver to return to the U. S.

Teague's foot hesitated over the accelerator when the guard waved him forward. Would they have photos of them? Had Jenna discovered that they'd modified the bacteria to thrive in the open elements and spread by air and water? If so, what would the governments of the world not do to capture them? And if they were captured, what would they not do to punish them?

This was the last hurdle. Once they were across the border, fuel would be available and they could make it to their facility south of the Athabasca tar sands in one long push. Then he would change the face of the world forever.

Teague glanced over at Udo, who had grown a haphazard beard and was wearing a baseball hat with "Yellowstone" embroidered on it. Jonas was even less recognizable. His long hair was now close-cropped and he'd been force-feeding himself for the entire drive, gaining almost twenty pounds, which effectively softened the frightening intensity that made him so distinct. Teague, for his part, had shaved the top of his head into an enormous bald spot and dyed what was left of his hair nearly black. A set of distractingly out-of-style glasses rounded out what he hoped was an effective disguise.

The wind coming through the window turned the sweat on his forehead cold as he pulled up and held three fake Canadian passports out the window.

"Would you all get out of the vehicle, please?"

"What's the problem?" Teague asked, concentrating on appearing relaxed as he opened the door and stepped out. Udo did the same, and Jonas followed, squeezing his new bulk between the front seats of the van.

"What was your business in the U. S.?"

"Vacation. We were just driving around touring when all this happened," Teague said in an easy, friendly tone. "We were in Florida when the shit really hit the fan. I mean, how much farther could you get from home and not fall in the ocean?"

The border guard examined him suspiciously and then turned his attention to the Germans. Jonas had rubbed his eyes to make them as red as possible, and he coughed energetically into his hand. They'd spent their interminable drive working on Udo's already light accent and he would be fine answering general questions, but Jonas was hopeless. The best they could come up with was a bad case of laryngitis.

"Could you open the van, please?"

Teague walked around the back and did as he was asked, pulling the doors open to reveal a calculatedly messy interior. They'd dumped the medical equipment they took from the lab and replaced it with clothing, brochures, coolers, and guide books. The guard crawled inside, pushing things around and then suddenly froze.

"Something wrong?" Teague asked, his heart rate rising despite having anticipated this.

"There's an extra fuel tank," the man said, anger audible in his voice as he jumped back down to the pavement.

"We had that installed in Louisiana so we could make it back across the U. S.," Teague said. "It's easier to buy in one big lump than to try to go looking for twenty gallons every day."

The guard was obviously unconvinced. "There's no rule against you coming in with the tank," he said. "But we have regulations about how much fuel you can take back into the U. S. If you fill that up and try to cross back, you're going to have serious problems."

"Are you kidding me? We're never going back. Do you have any idea what it's like to drive a gas-guzzling van with Canadian plates across the U. S. right now? We're lucky we didn't get shot."

Still looking skeptical, the guard opened the driver's door and leaned inside. He searched the glove box and floor, finally settling on the large stainless steel thermos wedged between the seats.

Teague watched nervously as he tapped it with a fingernail and then reached for the lid to twist it off. Even though Teague knew there was a hidden locking mechanism that would make it impossible, he found himself holding his breath until the guard gave up and turned back to him. "What's in this?"

The future, Teague thought as he leaned in the door and turned the thermos around to display the Starbucks sticker on the front.

Chapter
35.

"Real equipment," Jenna said, dragging a hand across a tangle of stainless steel and plastic as she followed along behind Beamon. The lab was state of the art -- every surface polished, every gadget carefully built into a table or wall, every computer brand new.

"After a couple of weeks of sleeping on the floor and working with toaster ovens, this must look pretty good," Beamon said.

She shook her head slowly. "I should have called you sooner. I shouldn't have waited

"There's no point in dwelling on 'should have,' "Erin said.

"He's right," Beamon agreed. "Besides, if you'd called me right away, you'd have probably ended up in the hands of the CIA and then we'd be nowhere right now. So mark it up to a bad decision that came good."

"Erin! Jesus, man. Thank God you're finally here."

Steve Andropolous pushed his way past two men in lab coats and ran across the crowded room, but stopped short about ten feet away.

"Hi, Steve," Jenna said quietly.

"Jesus .. . they told me you were alive, but I don't think I really believed it until this second." He started forward again, gaining speed before colliding with her and wrapping her in a bear hug. "The idea of you out there alone in the ocean . . ." He sniffled loudly. "Going under and fighting your way back up. And then going un--"

"It's okay, Steve." She patted him on the back and then tried gently to break his grip. "I'm alright."

He finally released her, taking a step back and redirecting his teary gaze toward Erin and Beamon. "What the hell happened to you guys?"

The cut in Beamon's cheek had been neatly stitched, but now seemed to demand an elaborate pirate costume. Erin's face was intermittently swollen and bruised, and his right eye was still blood red, though the doctor said it looked worse than it really was.

"I could really use some good news," Beamon said as Andropolous gave Erin an equally energetic if not quite so emotional embrace.

"Good news?" he said, looking vaguely startled as he released Erin and stepped back. "There is no good news. I only have `really bad' and 'totally fucked up.' Come on, I'll show you."

Jenna tried to keep her eyes on Andropolous's back as they followed him through the lab, but it was impossible not to notice that the people around them stopped work as they passed. Were they just curious or did they know that she was responsible for all this? Was there accusation on their faces?

"Did they send you all my data?" she asked.

"We got everything," he said. "Seriously, they disassembled the whole building you were in and shipped it along with a few hundred tons of the dirt it was sitting on. It's all sealed in an airplane hangar a few miles from here."

"And what have you figured out?" Beamon asked.

"Mostly that Jenna was right -- no big surprise there, I guess. The bacteria she designed has been heavily modified to survive in the open elements and to spread easily."

"Any idea how long it can survive outside?" Erin asked.

"Nope. We haven't managed to kill it yet. We've got samples in all kinds of different conditions: we're starving it, freezing it, subjecting it to high levels of solar radiation. Nothing works. It seems to have the ability to go dormant in really adverse conditions."

"How long can it stay that way?"

"I'd guess a long time."

"How long?" Beamon asked. "A week? A month?"

"Probably years."

"Christ," Erin said quietly.

"So let me get this straight," Beamon said. "If this stuff gets out, it could travel around the world, getting into oil-production facilities and fields without any human help at all, and people will end up pulling their cars around with horses."

Andropolous didn't answer, and Jenna was finding it increasingly hard to breathe. Erin finally spoke up.

"You're thinking too small, Mark." "Small? That's small?"

"It's true that engine fuel is an oil derivative, but they also rely on petroleum products for lubrication. If your car runs out of gas, no big deal, right? But if it runs out of oil, it's history. Now extrapolate that out. Think of the huge turbines that generate our electricity. Or water pumps, or windmills. Now consider the petrochemical industry that makes our pharmaceuticals. And --"

Beamon held up a hand. "I get the point."

"That's just the bad part," Andropolous said hesitantly. "You haven't heard the really fucked up yet."

"You've got to be kidding me," Beamon said. "How the hell could it get worse?"

They turned a corner and stopped in front of a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, behind which was Jenna's bicycle. Andropolous tapped a few commands into a keyboard and a large monitor came to life.

"What you're looking at is a magnification of the bike's seat."

Jenna backed away until she bumped into a table, but Erin stepped closer, peering at the screen.

"You can see the pitting where the bacteria's eating it," Andropolous continued.

Erin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. For the first time, he looked scared.

"Am I missing something?" Beamon said. "What are you telling me? That in a couple years our main form of transportation is going to be squeaky bikes that are really uncomfortable?"

"It's not just the seat," Erin said. "That type of plastic is in everything. It's what we use to insulate wires, to build parts for machines, to make clothing. If these bacteria get out, you can pretty much say goodbye to everything -- the electric grid, the Internet, phones. You name it, it's gone. We're talking about plowing fields the same way we did a thousand years ago. It --"

"Stop," Beamon said, grabbing both Erin and Jenna by the backs of their collars and shoving them into an empty room at the far end of the lab.

"This isn't the bubonic plague," he said, slamming the door behind them. "It's oil! You're exaggerating, right? Trying to make a point?"

Jenna felt the malaise that had taken hold of her suddenly disappear and she began pacing the length of the room, her stride turning almost violent as she moved back and forth. "That son of a bitch! That crazy son of a bitch!" Her breath came faster and faster, until she had to put a hand on the wall to stay upright.