CICADA: A Stone Age World Novel (23 page)

She hoped that he’d gotten the note she left for him. But if he didn’t make it to their apartment, perhaps he found out from Rush. She wanted him safe.

What was in store for her couldn’t be good. They would probably make an example of her to the other scientists and the other workers of Bios-2; she now knew they were in fact all prisoners here. Regardless, she had to find a way to escape. She reached down to the back of her shoe and pulled out the small knife she had hidden there. Carrington joked about it, calling it her James Bond knife, but he would have thought it smart now. After getting it free, she was about to slice at the zip-tie binding her hands but stopped.

She looked back at the two men who didn’t yet notice she was conscious. She was in plain view of them. Even if she could free herself, how far could she get before being caught again? The hallway, the elevator, certainly not the building exit. No, patience had always served her well in the past. She would wait for the right time. And if she was lucky, she might be able to surprise and kill one of them at close range. She had done it before, and she would look forward to doing it again. So she closed her eyes, clutched the cool comfort of her knife in her palm, listened to them and waited.

Carrington had been waiting for so long behind the secretarial desk outside Westerling’s office, his legs were cramping up. He figured that someone else had a similar idea, because that person had already taken out four guards at the tower’s entrance door, left wide open. He had been able to walk right up to Westerling’s door, but then he had heard the voices and ducked behind this desk. Deanna and Leanne were escorted out of Westerling’s office; they all walked to the elevator. Still, he waited. Now he heard only two voices in Westerling’s office: Lunder’s and the senator’s. It was time.

He peeked around the desk in both directions and saw just one guard standing between him and the door. This guard was playing with his radio, fumbling with the volume and squelch control and then the talk button. No doubt, he was frustrated by the disturbance Carrington had created. Each time he depressed the talk button, it would squeal. Unfortunately, so did the two radios he had bound together and later placed in the drawer of the desk he was currently hiding behind. The guard studied the desk, trying to figure out what he was hearing in front of him. Carrington could see him through a small hole the computer cords snaked through under the desk.

The guard held his radio up in front of him like some sort of radio Geiger counter and pressed the talk button firmly. The hidden radios squealed louder now.

It was time to make his move. His heart raced, and his fear wanted desperately to take over, but he had to confront these two men and he couldn’t let this guard get in his way.

He rose abruptly, unintentionally banging his knee against the desk. Carrington’s presence, the banging noise and the gun pointed at him startled the guard so much, he dropped his radio. When the guard saw that Carrington’s hand was shaking, he had a shot of confidence. He stuck his palm out, while his other hand moved slowly toward his gun.

“Hold it, Dr. Reid,” he said. “You don’t want to do anything stupid.” The crease of a smile on the guard’s face told Carrington what he didn’t want to know. “Now give me your gun,” he demanded, moving his hand closer to his own.

Carrington knew there was only one way forward for him, and he was committed to his course. It was time to cross his own Rubicon.

He pulled the trigger.

The gunshot jolted her and her eyes popped open.

“What the hell?” Westerling said softly.

Lunder beckoned him back with his hands. “Shhhh.” He drew his Luger and walked out of her view, toward the door.

She looked back at Westerling, who was withdrawing farther from the door, eyes fixated on the area around it. Maybe someone else was going to do her work for her. She just wished she could see past the damn furniture inside the senator’s office that blocked her view. She watched him and listened.

Westerling stepped back a few paces, and then behind his leather chair. He seemed to shrink a couple of inches, as if he was about to duck to the ground.

The sound of a door opening quickly and then banging into a wall caused him to jump slightly. He lifted his arms in the air, as a sign of surrender, and displayed that false grin he loved to shine on people, the one that said “vote for me.”

A familiar voice demanded, “Where is Lunder?”

Westerling tensed up like something was about to happen and then he ducked behind his chair and peeked over the edge.

“Right behind you, asshole,” Lunder stridently announced. “Drop it.”

There was a loud metallic
clank
and she saw Westerling stand up resolutely. He walked back to where he was standing before. Some other movement came into her view… as she feared,
it’s Carrington!

He walked toward Westerling, shoulders stooped in defeat. Lunder followed, holding his Luger and now a second gun on her husband.

Carr was caught.

“What the hell did you think you were going to do with this, Dr. Reid?” Lunder walked around him and wiggled his gun at him like a parent admonishing a child, before tossing it on Westerling’s desk. It clanked and came to rest at the opposite side, way out of reach. “He killed Clyde outside your door,” Lunder said to Westerling. “Shot him in the chest.”

“Look who else we caught.” Westerling pointed at the conference room on the opposite side of the floor-to-ceiling glass wall. Carr could see his wife tied up on the floor of a conference room, her eyes filled with anger and fear. “Little bitch tried to shoot me too. But we’re smarter than both of you. That wall is hardened to withstand a rifle blast. So, she had a better chance of shooting herself than me. Now, we will pass sentence for your crimes.”

Carrington was shocked to see her lying there. But, as hard as it would be for her, she had to witness this and she had to know what he knew. If only she could hear them.

Her voice crackled through a speaker above them. “Shouldn’t we be together if you’re going to judge us?”

“Shit, she can hear us,” Westerling grumbled, wringing his hands.

“Doesn’t matter; they’re both dead,” Lunder stated.

“Since we’ve already been condemed to die,” Carrrington jumped in, hoping to stop Lunder from getting Melanie, “and since my wife can hear this, perhaps you can explain what you’re doing with a fission reactor that is venting large quantities of gamma radiation into a volcanic vent?”

Lunder froze in his tracks, halfway between them and the glass wall. He started to walk back to Carrington. “How? How could you know this?”

“Remember, we’re in the presence of the brilliant Dr. Carrington Reid.” Westerling stepped to the bar area and poured himself a bourbon, and then sat calmly on the sofa facing him. “You’ve been poking around where you shouldn’t have.”

“What I don’t understand is why? Why would you do something that not only puts your people and your daughter and granddaughter at risk, but puts the whole world at risk?”

“One word, Dr. Reid: control.” Westerling took a sip, enjoying this almost as much as one of his best Cubans.

“A number of years ago, something monumental yet tragic happened. My wife and my son-in-law were killed by some two-bit hoodlum on the day of my granddaughter’s birth. That changed me.” He looked pained and paused for a moment.

“I was already working on the Bios-2 project, hiding its billion-dollar cost in multiple appropriations bills to keep it out of public scrutiny. But, B2 was only a carbon copy of Cicada at the time, using plans we had bought from Cicada’s manager. My ultimate plan didn’t materialize until the day after my wife and son died. You see, I realized then that society was broken; I was going to find the means to fix it, using B2 as the platform.

“It was fortuitous, then, that I told Lunder here my plan and Lunder handed me the means to carry it out. Together, we swiftly changed B2 to what it is today, all in preparation for the Event. I didn’t know when the Event would occur, certainly didn’t expect such a big solar flare, knowing an X1 or X2 would do just fine and those occurred all the time, as you constantly reminded us subscribers to your newsletter. But my waiting paid off and we were rewarded with an X45 flare; again, thanks for the warning. It was the big one that you and all the other solar scientists were dreading and few prepared for, even though it was inevitable.

“And so I executed my plan. It was a simple one, really. After a few years, I alone would have control of the world, scrubbing away the scum that once inhabited it. Sure, billions would die, but with them, so would the lazy bums who sucked off the tits of the working population. And in the end, I would give this new world to my surviving daughter and granddaughter. The world would be reborn in an image of my choosing. And I would have total control over it.”

Carrington had suspected all this, but to hear it articulated so blatantly and with such disregard for human life was shocking, unimaginable. “So, you murdered billions just for control?”

“To quote from my favorite movies, but in my own way, ‘The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.’”

“You’re a monster.”

He smiled and took another gulp.

Carrington turned and looked at Melanie in the next room. “Did you hear all of this?”

Tears streaming from her eyes and her head nodding confirmed it. She mouthed, “Yes.”

“I’m sorry for what I’m about to do, my love. I hope you will forgive me. And if there is life after this one, I hope we meet again. I l-love y-you,” he stuttered.

Her face contorted in confusion. “What are you doing, Carr?” Her voice was scratchy over the speaker.

Carrington turned and walked toward Westerling. “I knew this, but I wanted her to hear you, so that she could tell the others after I killed you two.” He lifted his shirt and showed them that he was wearing a bomb strapped to his torso. “Goodbye, assholes.”

Melanie realized what Carrington was about to do when he lifted his shirt. He was going to kill them, and he knew that she would be protected behind the hardened wall—and now she knew everything they did.

In quick motions, she sliced her bindings off and yelled, “Carr, don’t!”