Capitol Punishment

FOURTEEN Witch’s Brew

Zero.

A small cam rotated toward a magnet suddenly energized, freeing a piston that had held the deadly contents of the cylinder in check for several weeks. Instantly, pushed by the several atmospheres of inert gas with which Nikolai Kostin had pressurized the cylinder, the VZ began to spray freely into the ventilation system. This misty liquid was instantly picked up by the forceful flow of air from the SunSnow blowers and pushed through the diving turn of the ductwork and into the treelike divider network that snaked through the bowels of the building.

The fine droplets of VZ did their first damage on 71.

The secretary looked to the A/C vent, her nose twitching at the unpleasant smell now invading her office. The noxious sulfur odor, a product of the binary method of combination, caused her to recoil, her face a grimace.

“What is that?” Annoyed and wanting to give Building Services a piece of her mind, she took the phone in hand and reached to the keypad, but her hand tensed before any numbers could be pressed. The appendage clenched, then shook as she looked at it, then both hands began vibrating.

What?

She looked upward, not at anything, as her neck muscles spasmed. Her head shook now, and suddenly both legs flexed like bent twigs and released, propelling her backward off the chair. On the floor her mouth went wide, as did her eyes.

No! Air! Please, God!

Her mind, beginning to feel the effects of the nerve agent, tried to comprehend what was happening, tried to give what was afflicting her a name. Heart attack? Stroke? Seizure? It was part of those things, and much more. In her muscle cells, the chlorinesterase enzyme, whose function was to act as a transmission conduit for “release,” or “off’ signals, was being short-circuited. Normally, when the muscles received electrical impulse signals from the brain to contract — an “on” signal — whether involuntarily, as in the heart, or voluntarily, as in the legs when walking, the chlorinesterase enzyme acted as the messenger that told the muscle cells to relax again. But the VZ, being carried to those cells by the circulatory system, was interrupting that process, preventing the muscles from relaxing after contracting. The brain, excited by the terror of the moment, was firing off signals that were being interpreted only as “on,” causing virtually every muscle to spasm uncontrollably.

The woman’s legs and arms were pulled into a near fetal position as her body — she no longer had control of it — jerked violently, portions slamming into furniture to add superficial physical injury to the invisible trauma going on inside her person. There was pain, but it seemed to come from everywhere at once as a blanket of ache, broken every few seconds by sharp barbs of fire, mostly from her mouth. And there was sound, a sharp cracking that seemed to come from within her head. Both estimations were correct. Her teeth, literally, were breaking as uppers and lowers slammed against each other with tremendous force, the jagged shards that remained digging into the pulpy, bleeding flesh that used to be her gums.

But the damage of consequence was to the body’s most vital muscle: the heart, a muscle that contracts and relaxes, drawing blood in and pumping it out. Without the delicate rhythm in place, without being able to relax and draw more blood in, the heart spasmed uselessly. It quivered, moving no blood, a state that it, like the rest of its host, could not survive for any extended period.

Mercifully, the woman lost consciousness after two minutes, but the death that was slowly taking hold would take several more to reach its clinical state of definition. Until then, life, or some form of it virtually impossible to imagine, would continue, then surrender to the inevitable.

The same scene was repeating itself in the large offices on 71, and in the more numerous spaces on 70. And 69. And 68. It was almost without change. First the sulfur smell, then a sense of wonder, then the first twitch. Down farther, to 67, where the occupants of an entire suite of offices, crammed while wishing a colleague a happy and healthy retirement, were overcome and struck down. A fellow reveler, returning from the rest room, opened the office door to see her co-workers writhing on the floor, and splayed across desks, their mouths frothing, trying to draw in air like landed fish. Her mind went into overdrive as the sulfur smell reached her, and instinct took over. Gas leak! she thought, and bolted down the hall, unaware that she was being chased by the airborne droplets traveling through the ductwork hidden in the ceiling above her, and those being pulled along in the wake turbulence her body made as it scrambled to get away. She stopped at the elevator and stabbed madly at the down arrow, her finger breaking on the third attempt. Looking to the ceiling, and knowing not why her head was rearing back, she flopped backward and became the last victim on 67.

Then it was 66. 65. 64. 63. A full ten floors the VZ mist had been spread, and now it was having difficulty traveling through every duct, as its volume was being absorbed by its victims and by inanimate objects, such as furniture, ceiling tiles, and even, in small amounts, by the interior of the ductwork. On 62 a young lawyer, working on the day the more senior people in the firm had off, caught a faint whiff of the sulfur odor, and opened his office door. Seeing two others from his office on the hallway floor, their bodies twitching and rolling, he slammed the door and ran to the phone.

“Nine-one-one, what is—”

“First Interstate Tower, the offices of Lothrop, Bowman, and Finch. Something’s wrong! Some sort of gas leak or something! I can smell it, and…and…”

“Sir…? Sir…?”

The downward journey continued, the big and powerful SunSnow blowers living up to every claim their designers had made. To 60, then 50, then 40. By the time it reached 32, a minute and a half after release, it was sufficiently dissipated that dozens of frightened workers were able to reach the phone and complete calls to 911, as well as to Building Services. On 12, Lena Carerra collapsed against the door to Anne Preston’s outer office, one hand on the knob. On 74, the pagers worn by Ray Harback and Carl Tomei were vibrating on their belts, but no response was to come. A frightened junior engineer, seeing the first throngs of people pouring from the stairwells and racing toward the front doors, some dragging grotesquely convulsing friends, ran to the main security desk.

“What in God’s name is going on?!” the security director screamed at the junior engineer, the sight on the monitors before him having already sent one of his officers scurrying out of the building.

“I don’t know!”

“There’s bodies everywhere! Look!” The security director pointed to the monitors, which received video images from the cameras mounted in every main hallway.

“They’re running for the elevators and dropping. My God, what is this?”

The junior engineer, three years out of Texas A & M, stared at the piles of bodies against what seemed to be every elevator door. “Hit the alarm.”

“What?”

“Shut the elevators down and hit the alarm. Now!”

The security director took care of both directions in only a few seconds. “Done.”

“Are all the emergency systems up?”

“Of course they are.”

“Throw the breakers.”

“What?!”

“Dammit, there’s something spreading around up there, and it’s coming this way. Gas or something.”

The calls were saying something about a strange smell, the security director remembered. In the vents.

“We’ve got to cut the environmentals,” the engineer said. “The only way to do that is to simulate a power failure. The emergency lights will keep the halls and stairwells lit.” If anyone is still alive to need them. “Now. Do it!”

The security director grabbed his keys and followed the engineer to the main breaker panel a few yards away. His key was in the safety lock when the first hint of sulfur snapped his head toward the vent.

“Hurry!” the engineer shouted, taking the keys from his petrified colleague. He pulled the panel open, ignoring the groan and slap of the man falling to the floor, and grabbed the main breaker switch, yanking it away from the wall as his head, inexplicably, snapped backward.