Alpha

Chapter Ten

Bell has just signed the authorization allowing time and a half for Dana Kincaid, the ASL interpreter he’s brought in for Athena and Amy and Howe and the rest, when Nuri shoves his office door open. There’s no knock, and he looks up and sees it in her eyes, and before she’s finished speaking he’s out of the chair and moving, feeling the dread bursting in him like exploding glass.

“The Spartan,” Nuri says, backing up as he approaches, then pivoting, falling into step. “Alarm just spiked in the southwest of the park, near Terra Space.”

“Bio or chem?”

“It’s reading botulinum.”

A cold fear latches onto Bell’s back, begins trying to claw its way into his chest. “Got to be a false positive.”

“And just wouldn’t that be nice? Struss is running a diagnostic now, but we don’t know how long it’s going to take.”

“What’s the wind?”

“Blowing from the south-southwest, about three knots.”

“Botulinum?”

“Yeah.” Her voice is flat, the doubt and the concern canceling one another out, Bell imagines.

They’re coming down the stairs, now, from the third floor to the command post on the second, and Bell is taking them two, three at a time. Nuri, a handbreadth shorter but long-legged, nonetheless struggles to keep up. Bell runs the numbers in his head, three knots an hour, 156 acres, converts to metric, says, “Little over eight minutes before it covers the park.”

“Closer to seven, if we assume even distribution, constant wind speed, which we can’t. But we’re talking about an unknown, it could be less, could be more.”

Nuri leans ahead of him, shoves the door open into the second-floor command post. Heads turn, and Bell can see the fear, hear the silence of the room as he moves to the air monitoring station, where a middle-aged Norman Struss is working a shift that’s on the verge of turning into a nightmare. Bell ignores the man, feels eyes on him, Nuri’s among them, as he stares at the monitor. The Spartan’s screen lists chem and bio agents in columns, has its own section for radiation, and it’s flickering through readings as though it were flipping through a slide show. Then it settles, displaying an image much like an EKG, with multiple color-coded lines running across a horizontal axis. Negative anthrax, negative sarin, negative cyanogen, negative radiation, negative, negative, negative, negative.

Except this one, this line that is flexing and spiking and pulsing in bright red, marked BOTULINUM. A callout, recording estimated concentration per sample taken. Lethality is measured by median lethal dose, or LD50, the amount of any given agent that will kill 50 percent of a population exposed to it. Bell is thinking about botulinum, thinking about context, remembering VX nerve agent. A lethality of roughly thirty micrograms to one kilogram of human being, or, to put it another way, in aerosol form, one breath of it delivers enough toxin to kill 150 people.

That’s VX, Bell remembers.

But botulinum toxin, appropriately weaponized, has a theoretical LD50 of three nanograms per kilogram. That’s a thousand times more lethal. This is the same stuff that Aum Shinrikyo tried to manufacture before giving up on it and switching to sarin when they attacked the Tokyo subway system. They gave up on it because they could never get the vector to work properly.

A problem somebody else seems to have solved.

It’s not an instant death. Symptoms on average begin to present at six hours to two days after exposure, but there have been cases of incubation within two to three hours, and within as long as four days. Unlike VX or sarin, which cause seizure and paralysis, botulinum causes muscle atrophy, loss of control, and, inevitably, respiratory failure. Victims suffocate, their diaphragms literally unable to work their lungs.

Bell doesn’t know how many people are in the park today. He doesn’t know how many people are at Disneyland, or Knott’s Berry Farm, or even how many live in Irvine and its environs. But he’s pretty damn sure that if the Spartan II is reading botulinum and if it’s telling the truth, then there’s more than enough traveling in the air to spread far and wide beyond the confines of WilsonVille.

Nuri has the phone ready, hands it to him as he reaches out, then puts an extension to her own ear. Bell doesn’t look away, staring at that monitor. The Spartan II that he just doesn’t trust. The Spartan II that maybe is lying to him, but is maybe telling him the truth, and he has to push, and push hard, to keep the thoughts of Amy and Athena from overwhelming his reason. Nuri at his elbow, and she’s watching him carefully, and he shakes his head just barely.

Marcelin’s voice on the line now. “Jad? What’s going on?”

“Waiting on Porter,” Bell says.

“I’m here. We’ve got alarms relaying through the office, I was just about to-”

“The Spartan tripped for airborne botulinum, now at forty-three micrograms per sample.”

“Jesus Christ,” Marcelin says.

“We’ve got a diagnostic running, but it’s going to be”-Bell looks at Norman Struss, who holds up his left hand, shows him five fingers, then five fingers again, then five fingers a third time-“fifteen minutes before it’s completed, before we know whether it’s a system fault or not.”

There’s a fraction’s pause, both men at the ends of the lines absorbing, digesting. Marcelin speaks before Porter, his voice controlled. “Could it be a false positive?”

“No way to tell at the moment.”

“It doesn’t fit the profile,” Porter mutters, speaking more to himself than to them. “It doesn’t fit their profile, you can’t just weaponize botulinum, it’s not something you can do in a high-school chem lab, it’s not in their profile.”

On the monitor, the pulsing line jumps, the machine bleats again, repeatedly. Norman Struss taps keys quickly, silencing the Spartan. “New readings, now central north side, from Fort Royal to the coaster. It’s spreading. Jesus, it’s spreading.”

“You guys hear that?”

“It doesn’t make sense. If this is retribution, they’d take a suicide run at the gates, blow themselves and take whoever they can with them, go out like true believers shouting it to the clouds. Run a truck loaded with ANFO into the parking lot, that’s the profile. This doesn’t make sense!”

“How long will it take to evacuate the park?” Marcelin asks.

Bell looks to Nuri, about to ask her, sees that she’s been writing on a piece of paper. She holds it up before he can ask the number: 49K AS OF 1030H.

“We’re over forty-nine thousand,” Bell says into the phone. “Best case, we can clear the park in twenty minutes. That’s best case, Matt. And I’d want to second-sweep for stragglers.”

“Shut it down, evacuate the park,” Porter says. “Jesus Christ, shut it down now, Matthew!”

“Jad?”

Bell is still staring at the monitor. His head believes what he’s seeing, but he can feel it in his gut, there’s something not right about this. Something about the way the sensors are tripping, the way the toxin seems to be spreading, but he can’t articulate it, can’t find words to fit the feeling.

“You’re going to have to intake, treat, nearly fifty thousand people,” Bell says, the image, unbidden and imagined, Athena lying on a gurney, pumped full of antitoxin, unable to even gasp for breath behind a bag valve mask. “You’re talking about men, women, children, the elderly, all the staff-”

“You want to take that chance?” Porter is quietly ferocious. “You’re thinking about WilsonVille, I’m thinking about Southern fucking California. This shit doesn’t care where the park ends, Bell!”

“If that’s what it is.”

“What else can it be?” Marcelin asks.

“You want to take the chance it’s a false positive? You want to take that chance? Because I sure as hell won’t.”

“I agree,” says Bell. “Doesn’t matter, Eric’s right. We have to clear the park.”

“Do it,” Marcelin says, and there’s no hesitation or doubt in his tone.

Immediately, over the line, Bell can hear Porter shouting for Wallford. Send up the balloon, local, state, federal, call them all, we’ve got a biotoxin event originating in the WilsonVille theme park.

Marcelin continues, “Eric, get on the PA, make the announcement. Jad, get my park empty and then get yourself and your people out of there.”

“On it.”

“Make it happen.”

Bell hangs up his phone, sees again all the faces watching him, this room of twenty-odd people, twenty-odd Friends. All of them, plus one, a new addition, and everyone feels it, wondering if it’s already seeping into their lungs. Wondering how much time they have. Nuri is at the duty officer’s desk, has the big blue binder out, and nobody else is moving, waiting for him, waiting to hear it. He knows what he says now matters, and he hopes to God he can get it right.

“We are evacuating the park,” Bell says. “We are evacuating the park. Hear me, hear what I’m saying. You know what I know. You know what it might be. What it might be, not what it is.”

Nuri is back, opening the binder and setting it on the console in front of him. Bell can read the heading on the open page: PROCEDURE IN EVENT OF EVACUATION. She looks at him, and he nods, and she moves away, toward the line of radios locked down and sitting in their chargers.

“I’m going to give you your posts,” Bell says. “Take a radio, take a light, take your posts, clear the park. That’s all you have to do, just that. Just that, and one thing more.

“You cannot lose your nerve. Not a single one of you, not now. We have to get this right. The wrong word will start a panic. The wrong word will get people killed. You know that word, you’ve heard that word, but that’s all it is right now. That’s all it is, just a word. It’s just a word.”

He stops, feels that he’s spoken too much, that his own words-just words-are inadequate. But people are watching him, and he sees the resolve, a few of them nodding. They’re getting to their feet, and Nuri has the radios out, ready to distribute them, and so Bell takes the binder, and starts calling people by name.

One by one, he sends them out into the park with nothing but a flashlight, a radio, and their courage.

The room clears, is all but empty, when Nuri moves to Bell’s side, opening her mouth to speak. He holds up a hand, indicates Norman Struss, still manning the Spartan II, still trying to gauge the machine’s potential duplicity; Heather Heoi at the network station, on the coms; and finally Neal Bailey, watching the surveillance monitors. All of them are grim, all of them focused on their work, but Bell can see the beads of sweat shining on Struss’s balding head, and he knows how frightened all of them must be. He cannot fault them for that.

“Right, get outside, help with the evac,” Bell tells them.

The Spartan begins bleating once more, and Struss quickly silences it with two keystrokes. The man’s shoulders slump, then rise once more, and when he turns in his seat, the expression he’s wearing is both apologetic and somehow resolved. Bailey refuses to glance away from the monitors, and Heoi is looking at him almost sadly.

“Someone’s got to babysit this thing,” Norman Struss says. “Someone has to wait for the diagnostic to come back.”

“I’ve got a job to do,” Bailey says simply.

Heoi nods slightly.

“Doesn’t have to be you guys. Grab a radio and get outside, help with the front gate.”

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Mr. Bell,” Bailey says. “But this was my job today. Wouldn’t be right for me to leave another to do it. You need eyes here, anyway, someone to check and make sure everything gets cleared out.”

“I’ll take it,” Nuri says.

“Not your job, either, Miss Nuri.”

Bell is scanning the monitor banks, the surveillance video. A time stamp in the upper corner of one of the screens tells him it’s been all of five and a half minutes since Nuri fetched him from his office. The evacuation is already in progress, people moving en masse, and he can see it on the screens. There’s a Hendar leading a young man by the hand, one of the concession Friends waving the glow sticks he sells above his head as he leads a cluster of confused and anxious parents with their children. He’s seeing all this, but Bell is not seeing panic, and that’s maybe the best he can hope for.

He is also not seeing any sign of the group from Hollyoakes school. If they’d done as suggested, they should be on the north side of the park, guided to either the northwest or northeast service exits, and out into the employee lots. Further along the bank of screens, he can see a view of the gates in question, visitors flooding through them. In the northeast lot, one of the first responder teams has already arrived, a fire engine and a group of what looks to be six men suiting up for hazmat work, white jumpsuits and gas masks.

He still doesn’t see Athena, still doesn’t see Amy.

And he still can’t shake the feeling that something about this isn’t right, isn’t what it seems at all.

Norman Struss, Heather Heoi, and Neal Bailey are all looking at him.

“Second it comes back, you contact me,” Bell says to Struss.

“Second it comes back, you’ll know,” Struss says.

They’re coming off the stairs and into the fake police station, finding it deserted, hearing the muffled noise from the foot traffic outside, when Nuri says, “What’re we doing?”

Bell has his cell phone out, the real one, the secured one, not the office one. Presses it to his ear, ignoring Nuri, listening as it rings once, twice, is halfway through its third, when Amy picks up. There’s ambient noise over the line immediately, and he can hear someone shouting for people to stay calm, to follow him.

“Jad?” Amy sounds calm, if a little breathless. “Jad, what the hell is going on?”

“The park is being evacuated. Do you have Athena with you?”

“What?” The noise over the line swells, a background of multiple voices, the reverb of Porter on the PA. “We’re-hold on-we’re being evacuated.”

“Is everyone with you? You have everyone with you?”

“Yes. We’re with that girl, the one you got for us. She’s leading us out. There are park people everywhere.”

“She’ll get you out, just follow her directions. I’ll be in touch.”

“Jad? What’s going on?”

“I’ll call you later.”

“This is why you didn’t want us coming, isn’t it? This is-”

Bell hangs up, hits another button, raises the phone again. Nuri has moved away, she’s now standing by the double doors, looking out as she speaks on her own phone. She glances his way, and from her look Bell has a good idea just who it is she’s talking to, and maybe even what he’s telling her.

“Chain, Warlock. Sitrep.”

“Assisting southwest evac. You inviting me to this dance or am I going stag?”

“It’s not that you don’t look pretty in a dress,” Bell says. He’s moved closer to Nuri, now lowering her phone. Bell looks out the windows of the double doors, and the mass of people beyond is like a moving wall of flesh and anxiety. A man passes, pushing a stroller, wife with diaper bag right behind, pulling a little boy along by his hand. The boy is in tears, dragging a stuffed Rascal doll by its tail. As he watches, someone steps on the monkey, the boy losing his grip. He wails in protest, but his parents don’t stop.

“What we got?”

“Something in the air.”

“I need to hold my breath?”

“Too late for that.”

Nuri makes a noise, shakes her head. Bell ignores her.

“Am I coming to you or you coming to me?”

“Neither,” Bell says. “Heading for the Keep.”

“You’re bringing the Angel?”

“Negative.”

“Roger that,” says Chain, and the line goes dead.

“That was some mighty macho bullshit,” Nuri says. “You want to tell me what you’re thinking?”

Bell tucks his phone away. “I’m thinking that if someone had aerosolized botulinum you or I or someone we know would’ve heard about it. I’m thinking if someone has done it, we’re all dead anyway. I’m thinking it’s a hell of a good way to get a park all to yourself, and I’m thinking that I’ve never seen a dispersal pattern that uniform in twenty years of looking at worst-case scenarios.”

“Funny.”

“Funny?”

“I was thinking the same thing. Minus the twenty years part.”

“Good, then you’ll love the next bit. Get back into the command post and keep an eye on things.”

Her jaw tightens. “I’m coming with you.”

“That’s a negative. Real or not, there’s someone on the inside, someone who planted the botulinum or mind-fucked the Spartan. If that someone is upstairs right now, they have access to all our intel, our coms, our eyes, and all of it is compromised. I need someone I trust upstairs, and Chain’s not here, so I’m stuck with you.”

“Those aren’t my orders.”

“They are now, Angel. What’s the word of the day?”

Her eyes are more brown than hazel in this light, and anger flashes in them. “The word of the day is ‘buzzsaw.’ You don’t trust me?”

“The word of the day is ‘buzzsaw,’” Bell agrees. “I’ve got mission coms in my office, in the desk, middle left, back. You get a chance, plug in. Chain or I will contact as soon as we’re on the net.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Bell pushes on the doors, feels the wash of heat, the sunlight, the noise of the evacuating park.

“Of course I don’t trust you,” Bell says. “You’re CIA.”

Then he wades into madness.