Flowertown (24 page)

Ellie caught up to Guy as he ducked his head into the first room. “Aren’t you a bad motherfucker? One word from you and they jump.”

“One word from whoever’s running this raid and we’re screwed. Hide in here.” Ellie tried to protest, but he pushed her into an empty room and pulled the door almost closed. She could hear voices down the hallway barking orders. “No matter what happens, you stay in here.” He whispered through the crack in the door. “If anything happens, get out and head to the north med center. My team is there.”

“Where are you going?”

He ignored her and headed down the hall. She heard a woman swear loudly and the sound of something metal clattering
to the floor. In a few moments, soldiers headed Ellie’s way dragging several nurses in handcuffs along with them. Ellie withdrew farther into the room as she watched the procession. One of the nurses was bleeding, another fought the guards without success. Ellie tried to see through the throng of soldiers to find out if Rachel or Bing were in the group but couldn’t tell. A loud stream of obscenities echoed up the hallway and Ellie saw Olivia being shoved along in cuffs. She twisted in the grip of her guard, wresting herself free of his grasp, but before she could run, the guard slammed the butt of his machine gun into her back, sending her sprawling across the floor, her shoulder slamming into the wall just outside of Ellie’s door.

Ellie crouched down, hating the sound of Olivia’s body hitting so hard. Before the guard could haul her to her feet, Olivia looked up directly into Ellie’s shadowed face. Her eyes widened in recognition, and as she was lifted bodily, she flicked her gaze over her shoulder and mouthed one word: Bing. Ellie ducked back into the shadows, forcing herself to remain silent as she saw Rachel being carried out unconscious behind Olivia. More guards moved through as a voice at the end of the hallway called out.

“This section is clear, sir.”

“All right, move out.” Guy spoke in a calm voice, not looking into the room where he knew she hid.

“Sir,” the guard stood before Guy, “I have orders to clear the area.”

“It’s clear.”

“My orders said to be the last person out of the area. That includes you, sir.”

Guy nodded, his face dark, and walked down the hall. As he passed, his eyes flickered toward Ellie’s hideaway but his face showed nothing. The guard walked behind him, gun held at the ready, pulling doors closed as he went. His hand was inches from Ellie’s face as he pulled her door closed as well.

She waited in the dark until she could hear nothing. It was hard to tell if everyone was gone; her heart banged in her chest so loud she was certain someone else could hear it. Finally, summoning all her courage, she turned the knob and eased the door open. The lights were off in the hallway, but a glow of lamplight shone from somewhere behind the nurses’ station. Olivia had mouthed Bing’s name. Maybe that meant that Bing had made it back here, that he had somehow managed to avoid capture. She had to find him.

Crouching low and staying close to the wall, Ellie hurried down the hall and ducked behind the high desk of the nurses’ station. The light came from a file room behind a large cabinet, and she crept as quietly as she could to the doorway. Pulling the gun from her waistband, Ellie peered through the crack. She couldn’t see anything except a tall shelf of medical supplies. Ducking low, Ellie gripped the door and pushed it open. She crept along with it, hoping to stay low enough to go unseen by anyone who might be inside.

As the room came into view, she saw file cabinets and an old metal desk. Before she could move toward them, she heard a keyboard clicking. Freezing behind the door, Ellie held her breath until she heard Bing swear softly.

“Son of a bitch, hurry up.”

“Bing?” Ellie stuck her head around the door, and Bing jumped where he stood.

“Ellie?” His face was pale with shock.

She pushed the door closed behind her and hurried to the desk. “What are you doing?” She kept her voice a whisper. “How did you get back here? They’ve arrested everybody.”

“I know.” Bing stared at her as if she had just dropped from the sky. “How did you get back here?”

“I snuck in with Guy. I hid.”

“Shit, Guy is here?” His eyes moved wildly about the room.

“No, they made him leave. What are you doing?” She looked at the cable running from the computer tower to a small plastic box the size of a deck of cards.

Bing blew out a deep breath. “I broke into the medical mainframe. Rachel covered for me so I could sneak back here. I’m downloading medical records onto an external drive. How did you know I was back here?”

“Olivia told me. When they were dragging her out she told me to find you.”

Bing stared at her. “What did she say exactly?”

Ellie made a sound of exasperation. “She didn’t really have time to get into it, Bing. She was being dragged out by Feno goons. She looked back here and said ‘Bing.’”

He shook his head and looked back to the computer. “You really need to start paying more attention to details, Ellie. I don’t think she was telling you to save me. I think she was warning you.” He moved the computer mouse and clicked on more files.

“What? Warning me about what?”

Before he could answer, they heard footsteps, and Ellie spun around. Mr. Carpenter stood in the doorway. Ellie raised the gun and stepped in front of Bing. “Don’t move.” She hoped he couldn’t see her tremble.

Carpenter raised his hands, his eyes wide. He looked from her to Bing. “We had a report of a breach in the mainframe. I should have known it would be you.”

Ellie took a step closer, keeping the gun level. “Yeah, well, you knew you couldn’t trust me. Bing, are the files loaded?” She risked a look over her shoulder as he unplugged the drive and slipped it into his pocket.

“Yep, all the evidence we need to make sure Feno keeps up their end of the bargain.”

“What do you mean?” Ellie looked at him and then spun around as Carpenter lowered his hands. “Stay where you are!”

“No.” Carpenter leaned against the doorframe and smiled at Bing. “The convoy is ready whenever you are, Dr. Byrd.”

Ellie knew she had misheard him. She kept the gun trained on Carpenter despite the whooshing sensation of impossibility flooding over her. She looked to Bing as she always did, for answers, for a reality check, and he smiled at her. Turning to Carpenter, he tipped his head in her direction.

“See that expression, Carpenter? We call that ‘fracturing of reality.’”

“It’s very interesting, Doctor.”

“It never gets old, no matter how many times I see it.”

“Bing?” Her voice caught in her throat.

“Yes?” He smiled at her again, a calm and patient smile, then turned back to Carpenter. “Are we still exiting through the east gate?”

“Yes sir. You know, they’ve noticed the file download. They’re not going to let you leave with that external drive.”

“You don’t think so?” Bing drew his brows together. “Why don’t I tell them you did it? After all, you do owe me for the bruises on my face. Overplayed your role a bit.” Carpenter’s mouth opened in surprise, and Bing looked back at Ellie. “I think that’s only fair, don’t you?”

Without waiting for the answer, he reached out to the gun in her hand. She jerked it away, but he gripped the hand around the weapon. He didn’t try to take it from her; rather, he wrapped his hands over hers and twisted it to one side. Three quick squeezes of the trigger and Carpenter fell back into the hallway. Bing released her hands, and Ellie nearly dropped the gun from her trembling fingers. She heard a sound like a panting animal, and she knew the sounds came from her throat.

Her arms shook badly and her shoulders ached as she raised the gun at Bing. She wanted to scream at him, to demand answers, but her throat failed her and she could only gasp at air that would not go into her lungs. Bing glanced back at the computer and then at her. He saw the weapon and her struggle to form words and he laughed.

“Don’t even bother, Ellie. You’re not going to shoot me.” He pulled out the chair to sit and then stopped. “Trust me. I spent four years making sure you can’t raise a hand to me. Don’t believe me? Go on. Pull the trigger.” He stepped closer to her and grinned. “Do it. Kill me.”

Ellie blinked hard, her focus failing as she stared into the face of her best friend. Her fingers burned on the weapon and her muscles trembled with the effort, but her body would not obey the command her brain screamed. Bing. Bing. Bing. One word pounded through her brain, obscuring all logic and thought. She gritted her teeth, hearing her breath whistling.

“See? Four years of smoking you up with the right combo of meds and you’re quite the docile pet. You’re going to hyperventilate if you keep gasping like that. Not that it matters.”

She forced a word out. “Why?”

Bing laughed again. “Why? Could you be a little more specific? You mean, why did I offer my services to Feno? That’s easy. An assload of cash. And proof that my theories on psychological manipulation worked.” He slapped his forehead in comic despair. “Oh, man, I thought you had me on that. I thought for sure even you weren’t so fucking stupid that you would miss it.” Ellie only blinked, struggling to understand the words he was saying.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, the gun pressing against his chest, forgotten. “The book? In my room? You had it in your hands—
The Divisible Flock
. I wrote that. It’s my fucking masterpiece. It got me kicked out of Stanford on an ethics violation, but do you think I give a shit about that now?” Ellie drew her body in tight as he shook her. “It got published and got me invited to Feno to fix their little problem. And you had it in your hands and still couldn’t figure it out.” He pushed her away and she staggered backward, still drawn into herself.

He turned back and leaned over to bang on the keyboard. “For the love of God, how long does it take to launch a virus?” A few more keystrokes and he drummed his fingers on the desk. “You can put that gun down, Ellie. You’re not going to use it. On me, at least. Save your strength. You’ve got a long night ahead of you.”

Ellie raised the backs of her hands to her face, the gun pointing toward the ceiling. She couldn’t understand how she was still on her feet or why the ceiling hadn’t come down or why the walls weren’t melting. All she could hear was a blurry roar, and her mouth tasted like copper. She heard Bing approach her, and she didn’t resist when he lowered
her hands. She heard herself sob when his thumb gently wiped at the tears she couldn’t feel on her cheeks.

“Oh, Ellie.” His voice and his eyes were soft. “You’re such an authority whore.”

Her throat tore as she whispered through her tears. “Please don’t do this.”

“No? How about I do this?” He brought his arm around in a hard backhand across her face, slamming Ellie into the file cabinet. She cried out as she hit the metal, and Bing let out a loud sigh. “Oh, God, I have wanted to do that for so long. You have no idea.”

Ellie’s stomach cramped and she bent forward, gasping. Bing leaned down to look into her face.

“What’s that you’re saying? Please? Please what? Please shoot you? Please take care of every fucking thing so you can sit around and get high? Is that what you want? Speak up.”

“We were friends!” The words blew out of Ellie’s mouth in a spray. Bing grabbed her roughly by the hair and dragged her up.

“You want to know why we were friends? You want to know why?” He yanked her hair to make her nod. “Because there’s only one person on this whole planet who has more contempt for you than I do. You know who that is? Huh?” He dragged her across the office and pushed her in front of a wall. Ellie screamed, trying to pull herself free, but he twisted her arm behind her and forced her head back. “There she is.”

She saw herself in the mirror. Blood smeared from her nose, and her lip had begun to swell from Bing’s blow. He held her back to his chest, her hair pulled back tight, and hissed in her ear.

“Nobody could possibly ever hate you as much as you hate yourself, Ellie. You let this happen. You made it easy because you are so goddamn pathetic.” She tried to turn her head away from the sight of her sweating face and panicked eyes, but he held her fast. “Would it have killed you to ever give a shit about anything? Or anyone? Hell, would it have killed you to take a fucking shower once in a while? Look at you. Look what you have made of yourself.”

“No.” She saw blood and saliva spatter on the mirror and wished she could make herself go blind. “You did this. You did this with your drugs.”

“No, Ellie, you did this. The drugs just made it easier.”

The pain from his grip on her hair gave her mind a point of focus, and Ellie struggled for control. She gritted her teeth and glared at Bing’s reflection.

“Fuck you.”

Bing’s eyes widened in surprise. “Fuck me? Fuck you.” He slammed her forehead into the mirror. Ellie gasped and swore again. Again he pounded her forehead into the glass. She saw their image fractured. In the many shards, she saw Bing, and when he brought her face to the glass again, this time hard enough to make the glass fly to the floor, she saw him in her mind as she had seen him so many times.

“Bird.”

Bing banged her head once more against the glass, and Ellie could feel her legs tremble beneath her as blood began to run down the wall.

“Bird,” she said again.

“What are you saying?” Bing yanked her head back.

“Bird. You look like a bird.” The light over his head blurred as she blinked blood out of her swelling eyes. “I
know you.” Bing let her go and she swayed on her feet, her speech slurred. She forgot about the blood and chased her thoughts through the fog. “You looked like a bird. In the hospital. I knew you. I didn’t know Dr. Tabor. I knew you.”

She tried to focus on Bing as he sat back against the desk and watched her sway. “I look different without my beard, don’t I?”

It took a moment for the words to get through to her. She had to think what a beard was, and slowly her memory put the ideas together. In her mind she saw the face of her best friend in a thick, dark beard. And in her mind he transformed into that hated shadow-face of her nightmares, the face that had loomed out of the drug-thick soup of those long nights in East Fifth in the early years of Flowertown.

“You were my doctor.” The words slipped from her lips like smoke.

“Duh.”

The breath that tore up from her lungs was hot. “You fuck.”

He rolled his eyes. “Such elegant last words. You really are a piece of trash. It took me all of three sessions to know you would be a perfect event catalyst.”

“Why me?”

“Don’t kid yourself, Ellie. It wasn’t personal. You’re not that important.” He moved back around to the computer. “You’re just convenient. You were handy, but if you hadn’t worked out, there were half a dozen others I could have used. Big Martha would have been a fantastic face for a suicide bomber, but the sheer amount of meds it took to get into her head just wasn’t cost-efficient. Big bodies, big doses. You were a cheaper choice.” He looked over at her, running
his eyes down the length of her body. “I mean that in every way.”

Ellie spit a bloody wad onto the floor. “Guy is going to stop you.”

He leaned over the keyboard. “Guy is going to run around like GI Joe and get himself blown up. His psych eval makes him a perfect candidate for one of our heroes. Brave, handsome, loyal, and stupid enough to fuck the one piece of ass that tries to blow the whole place sky-high. I love it.”

She wanted to move. The back of his head tempted her to raise a chair and smash it into him, but her body would not obey her wishes. “Is that the irony you were looking for?”

Bing looked over at her, eyebrows raised. “Now you’ve decided to pay attention? How did you know about the irony factor? It’s a huge selling point to cement tragedy in a media-covered event. People lap it up. But no, that wasn’t the intended irony. Like your incredibly malleable mind, it was just a bonus.” He looked back at the screen, typed in a few more keystrokes, and swore as the computer beeped. “Don’t think I’m not appreciating the irony right here in front of us as my brilliant escape is being held hostage by the very computer that is going to cover my tracks.”

Ellie took a step forward to look over his shoulder. “Do you know what a smart bomb is, Ellie?” He didn’t bother to see if she answered. “I have a virus hidden in my own medical file—well, Ian Billingsly’s medical file. There are only a handful of people who know my alias. After what happened to Tabor, I decided not to take any chances. If anything had happened to me and someone tried to delete my file or mark me as ‘deceased,’ I hid a worm that would be activated to corrupt every bit of data on file. If I disappeared, so did
their vaccine research. Now that I’m leaving, I’m detonating that little rascal. I’ve got all the research here on my external drive. This is going to ensure that Feno keeps up their financial end of the bargain—and doesn’t decide to grow a conscience once their stock goes back up.”

“I’m not going to blow anything up for you.” Ellie tried to make her voice strong, but the blood running down the back of her throat made her whisper. “You can’t make me, no matter what you do.”

“Oh, honey, you really are dense, aren’t you?” Bing sat back against the desk and folded his arms. “Did you really think I would put the success of my venture on your lame stoner ass? I don’t expect you to do anything but flail about helplessly like the crazy person the world thinks you are. My team is setting off the explosions. My team is getting me out of here.”

“Guy’s team is finding them before you can set them off.”

“When we’re done here, Guy won’t be able to find his dick with both hands. We have provisions for all eventualities. The best-case scenario is that I get out, the press comes in, and before the whole world, bombs with your name on them blow this shit hole right back to hell. Then, as we read off the names of the hundreds of lives you took, the CEO of Barlay Pharma breaks in with the heartbreaking and, yes, ironic revelation that you mistakenly believed nobody was getting out of Flowertown when, in truth, everyone was being released. The world will shake their collective heads at the senseless tragedy and cruel irony.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Which part? The bombs with your name? Yeah, but you already knew that. Oh!” Bing let his mouth hang open in
mock surprise. “You mean the part about being released? No, that’s true. Well, it would be true if that wouldn’t bring down the shit storm of all time onto Feno and Barlay Pharma. Believe me, the celebration of the cure would be quickly overshadowed by the first autopsy. Whew.”

Ellie heard herself begin to pant again, her heart hammering in her ears as she tried to absorb what he was saying. “Who’s cured?”

“Everybody. Q, E, H, they all work. They’ve worked for over a year, closer to two.” Bing spoke casually, as if he were discussing a baseball game. “We had to be sure, of course. You know, cure, reinfect. Cure, reinfect. Bring in Feno newbies for some clean slates. Side effects, fatalities, they took forever to straighten out. Turns out Equilibrium has the fewest side effects in the short run and can actually be adapted to a spray to neutralize the chemical should it get into the soil again.”

“What are you saying?” Blood flew from her lips as she lurched forward. “Why aren’t you letting everybody go? Why aren’t you letting us out?”

“Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea what the months of reinfection have done to your livers? Your bones? Hell, your tooth enamel is enough to make this place look like the Island of Dr. Moreau. No, the most important thing we need at this point is to make sure no bodies get out. That’s why incineration is the best-case scenario.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“No, you won’t.” He didn’t sound concerned as the computer beeped. “The virus is launching, so all my tracks are covered. Don’t bother scheming, Ellie. Trust me. I’m smarter than you. Even if Guy and his little band of heroes
get most of the bombs dismantled, at the first explosion, when the press is here, Flowertown is going to be locked down tighter than ever. Plan B. Nobody will ever see the outside world again.” He checked his watch. “The absolute best ending you can hope for is to spend the rest of your miserable life tied to a bed in a very white room being pumped with mind-altering medications.” He grinned as her jaw went slack. “Sounds like something from a nightmare, doesn’t it? Oh, wait, it is something from a nightmare. Your nightmare. The white room. White, white, white. Am I right?”