Dark Creations: Dark Ending (Part 6) (25 page)

“Yes, we did,” he said, careful not to dash her hopes.  “We won the first round.”

“The first round,” she looked at him questioningly.

“It’s only just begun,” he said and the thin smile he’d worn sagged.

Chapter 21

Adrenaline raced through Amber’s veins like fire blazing on gasoline as she streaked down the Henry Hudson
Parkway, dodging cars and darting past them.  Though the Toyota Camry she was driving had not been designed for speed, she tested its engine and pushed it to its limits and maintained an average speed that hovered around the eighty mile per hour mark.  She would have preferred Jack’s Mustang for the speed and maneuvers she was demanding of the sedan, but she’d been forced to abandon it many miles ago at the truck stop diner. 

With its tires shot out and the once-pristine paintjob of its body peppered with bullets holes, the Mustang had sagged sadly as she and Kyle
had slid from their seats and searched for another form of transportation.  Ordinarily, she would have felt a pang of guilt at seeing it as she’d left it.  But she had not had time to feel guilt.  Amber had learned quickly that championing the fate of humanity, which teetered on the brink of destruction, had that effect on her. 

That
sentiment had been reinforced when she had been forced to scour the roadside parking lot for a car to steal.  She had not liked the idea of taking another’s personal property without permission, but saw it as a necessary means to an end.  She’d felt relatively certain that whomever the car belonged to would much rather endure the inconvenience of finding an alternate way home than die with the rest of humankind from a mysterious virus.  At least that’s what she’d told herself again and again as she’d trolled the parking lot and found an area that had been unlit and devoid of onlookers.  

There
, she had happened upon the Camry tucked in the rear lot behind the diner.  She hadn’t had to break the locks or anything elaborate.  The car had sat unlocked, as if waiting for her to steal it.  And steal it she had, yet another incident that would have ordinarily caused her to feel guilt.  But time did not exist for guilt.  So much had been lost already.  She’d wondered then whether it would be possible to make that time up, wondered still. 

With worry of making up for lost time plaguing her brain, she slid a sidelong glance at Kyle, an act that was sure to bring her happiness if nothing else.  His brow was furrowed and his eyes were narrowed, but he did not cover t
hem as he had when he’d first been introduced to her driving skills.  He seemed to trust her now, more than before.  She felt a slow smile tug the corners of her mouth as she recalled his frantic screaming at first, then his reaction to the car she’d selected to steal. 

“Get in!” she’d told
Kyle when she’d pulled the sad looking car around to the side of the diner where he’d waited.  He’d crinkled his nose at the Camry then had huffed, “Of all the cars to steal, this is the one you took?” His pickiness had made her testy at the time. “We don’t exactly have time to shop around for a better car.  This one was available and easy to break into, the only two factors I considered.  In case you forgot, the cops will be here any second now,” she’d fired back.

Her obvious annoyance combined with the reminder
that the police had been on their way had been effective at getting him inside the car.  He had not complained since. 

Now, with the bullet-sprayed diner and Mustang long behind them, she
not only believed that Kyle trusted her, but that he had also become convinced of the Camry’s ability. 

After
leaving the diner, Amber and Kyle had sped to the Saw Mill River Parkway and followed it until it turned into the Henry Hudson Parkway.  They had just passed an exit for West 81
st
Street and were fast approaching the next exit before the road elevated when Kyle spoke.

“There!  That’s him!”
he called out and pointed to a beige cargo van roughly a half-mile ahead of them.  “That’s Arnold’s van, isn’t it?”

A bone-deep chill coursed through Amber’s veins and
seized her heart, freezing it mid-beat, when she realized Kyle was right.  Arnold was in her sight.  She was shocked that he hadn’t been driving at a faster speed and that she had caught up with him.

“Okay. Okay,” she said.  “That’s him!” She watched
, craning her neck to look past cars and SUVs of every size to glimpse the van as it took the 79
th
Street exit.  “Where are you going, Arnold?” She muttered then pounded her fist against the steering wheel.  The cars in front of her had slowed to a near halt, rolling and creeping off the parkway with infinitesimal slowness.  “Come on!” she pleaded for the bottleneck to clear.  Her temples throbbed, exploding with pain.  Tension unlike any she’d ever felt in her short existence mounted.  All of humankind was depending on her.  She needed to stop Arnold.  He was close, so close, yet he’d just managed to slip from sight.  The way traffic was flowing, or
not
flowing, he might as well have been on another planet. Bumper to bumper, she crept with a current hell-bent on keeping her exactly where she was. 

When
finally the pace increased and she found herself entering a roundabout, she had three possible exits to choose from.  “Where are you taking the virus?” she mumbled to no one and felt the pain at her temples become unbearable.  She willed the migraine-like symptoms away, pressing them down into the darkest recesses of her being, numbing them with thoughts of a world ruled by Lord Terzini and run by emotionless creations.  She did not have time for pain.  All that mattered, all that she needed to do, was find Arnold and stop him from releasing her maker’s deadly plague.  But in a city filled with more than eight-million people and the hundreds, if not thousands, of tourist attractions available, the possibilities for his release site were limitless. 

She
decided to take the third exit onto West 79
th
Street, the exit she thought she’d seen the van take, and guided the car slowly until she glimpsed the dented bumper of a cargo van slinking left onto Amsterdam Avenue less than a quarter-mile away. 

“Is that him?” Kyle exclaimed and pointed to a taillight disappearing around a street corner. 

“I don’t know,” Amber answered.  She was not sure whether the van they’d caught sight of was Arnold, but awareness slithered down the length of her spine with serpentine deliberateness.  “I think it might be,” she added and could not describe the instinctive feeling breathing through her like a cool breeze.  She allowed it to calm her, and felt its gentle pull guide her.  She followed the van and turned left onto Amsterdam Avenue, as well.

High-rise building
s towered all around her and cars, more than she could count, spanned the three lane street.  Horns blasted.  Music boomed from open windows.  Drivers shouted.  Traffic lights and crosswalks blinked and added to the compete chaos of the situation, but she found herself quickly falling into step with her surroundings.  Still, traffic inched along.  Desperate to move faster than the crawling pace she was subjected to and with every muscle in her body cramping hostilely, she attempted to swerve the front end of the Camry into the adjacent lane to see whether she could begin weaving through the traffic as the yellow taxi cabs seemed to be doing. 

Impulsively, she stepped on the gas pedal and the car lurched into the lane to her
left.  Horns blared and the motorist behind her shouted vulgar language about a mother she did not have.  Her move proved to be of little success as she’d only advanced one car length and was not in the center lane, and Arnold was nowhere in sight. 

She scanned the street searching for the beige van, scrutinizing car after car, but there were so many.  Countless cars inched their way down the street and countless people walked the sidewalks
.  So many cars and so many people, yet not one of them were Arnold Gathers. “Dammit!” she swore under her breath as her maker’s choice to release his deadly virus in Manhattan was glaringly obvious.  Her chest tightened at the thought of everyone around her becoming infected in the coming days, hours, or moments. 

Gripping the steering wheel as tightly as the clenching in her chest, she
veered right again after seeing a narrow opportunity to slip back into the lane she’d just left.  The traffic light just ahead had turned yellow and she was determined to make it through before the light turned red.  She did not want to be set back another moment.  She stomped on the gas pedal after edging her way into the right lane, much to the annoyance of pretty much every car around her. 

Attempting to beat the red light
had seemed like a good idea, and would have been, if the light hadn’t turned red before her front bumper was beneath it. The crosswalk five-hundred feet ahead of her did not help matters either. The light changing had immediately precipitated a
safe to cross
signal for pedestrians looking to use the crosswalk.

“Oh shit, look out!” Kyle yelled as a small figure flickered before her bumper. 
Amber’s heart jumped to her throat and lodged there when she saw a bent, blue-haired form shuffling by.  She stood on the brake pedal and the Camry screeched to a halt in front of a hunched, elderly woman pushing a silver metal cart filled with groceries. 

“You almost hit her,” Kyle breathed and clutched his chest.  “Holy shit,” he said again for good measure. 

The woman glanced at them impassively and Amber thought the incident had miraculously gone unnoticed by her.  But when she hobbled to a stop as she passed the driver’s side window, she erected a gnarled and knobby middle finger and spat, “Asshole,” in a voice that sounded like the caw of a crow.

Kyle’s features gathered perplexedly and under any other circumstances, they would have shared a hearty laugh.  But Kyle’s features quickly transformed and he called out,
“There, up ahead!  He turned right!” He pointed again as the van took the second right onto West 81
st
Street.

She depressed the center of the steering wheel and heard the car horn wail impatiently
as she passed the red traffic light and navigated a labyrinth of cabs and cars.  “Come on dammit!” Amber cursed every driver around her then turned right onto West 81
st
Street. 

“I see him!” Kyle called
again.  “There he’s turning onto Central Park West!”

“I see him now,” Amber said and trained her gaze on the van like a sniper’s scope
on an intended target.  She silently vowed she would not lose him again.

“What the hell is doing?” Kyle
hissed.  Both his fists were clenched and he looked as fraught with stress and anxiety as she felt. 

She knew Arnold had been instructed to release the virus in
a densely populated area; a global hub that promised it reached as many people as possible and would be transferred to as many people as possible.  New York City had been the natural choice, given its proximity to Taft and the fact that it welcomed thousands of international guests each day, guests that would return to their homeland and bring a deadly souvenir.

When the van slowed to a halt in front of the Amer
ican Museum of Natural History, Amber inhaled sharply.  She drew upon the multitude of facts she’d memorized during educational downloads her maker had implemented during orientation into his membership and recalled that an average of five-million people visited the museum annually.  She did the math in her head and divided five million by three-hundred sixty-five, estimating that more than thirteen-thousand six-hundred people visited each day.  More than thirteen thousand would be infected, and those were just the people who visited the museum.  Tens of thousands of others who passed the museum would come in contact with the airborne virus as well. 

“
Oh my God,” she breathed and felt the magnitude of the circumstances slam into her like a freight train.  “This is his plan.  He’s going to release it here.”

Several cars were ahead of her and
horns still blared from every direction, but she’d become oblivious of the noise.  She could see the van, could see Arnold’s face in the side view mirror.  He was the Grim Reaper of the masses, only no one knew it.  To the world, he was a plain looking Caucasian man of average height and average build with thinning brown hair.  Nothing about him stood out.  Nothing about his appearance was dangerous or even hinted of a threat.  His thick black plastic rimmed glasses were the only notable detail of his appearance, and with the popularity of that style of glasses on the rise, Arnold Gathers was as good as invisible.  And invisible Arnold was set to discharge a deadly weapon on the fair people of Manhattan at one of the largest and most celebrated landmarks in the world: The American Museum of Natural History. 

Located o
n park-like grounds across from Central Park, the Museum soared with massive pillars at its entrance and sprawled while containing twenty-seven interconnected buildings.  Corner towers rose one-hundred-fifty feet tall and pink brownstone and granite bespoke of meticulous craftsmanship, of history. A subway station sat off to its left, on West 81
st
Street, less than a mile away and people poured from its terminal. 

“We still have a chance to stop him,” Kyle said determinedly. 

“I need to drive
through
these cars to get to him,” Amber huffed exasperatedly and jabbed an angry finger at the dozens of cars she was wedged behind.  She leaned across the armrest and center console of the car and saw that Arnold had not yet exited the van.

“We’re okay, we’re okay,” Kyle repeated and likely said it for himself more than her. 

“Screw this,” she said and jerked the steering wheel to the left.

“What the, what the hell are you doing?” Kyle screamed when the front tires of the car
jutted into the middle lane, into oncoming traffic.  “You can’t dart out into that wall of traffic!  This is Manhattan!”

“Then I’ll have to blow the horn,” she said and felt her faint grip on sanity
escape her.  She pressed the horn with the heel of her hand and held it there, and the sound seemed to ring out and bounce off the imposing buildings. 

“
Oh my God,” Kyle shouted as she shot out into the flow traffic.

The front end of the Camry burst forth into a sea of moving vehicles.  A Mercedes in the middle lane swerved
to avoid hitting her and collided with a car in the left lane and was immediately followed by the shriek of air brakes screeching from the behind.  Amber stepped on the brake pedal and stopped moving.  She looked over her shoulder, toward the direction of the shrieking brakes.  There, she saw a large furniture delivery truck attempting to stop and avoid crashing into the accident between the Mercedes and the car in the left lane.  Both had braked and the drivers were out of their cars arguing and gesturing at her.  But the truck seemed unable to stop, and no one seemed to notice yet.  It was as if the truck driver had underestimated the distance between his rig and the cars, or had not had time to react properly.  Either way, he was bowling toward the accident. 

Amber could not believe what she was seeing. 
She lowered her window and began shouting, “Look out!  Get out of the way!” and in an instant, the drivers who had been in the accident realized what was about to happen.  They cursed and scrambled for cover but the truck was tearing toward them. For Amber, it was as if the world had been paused then resumed in slow motion.  The truck slid out of control, its cab still facing forward while the trailer kicked out to one side, hurtling like a mighty wall at the disabled vehicles.  Brakes slammed and burning rubber filled the air as every other car on the road ground to a halt, all except the truck.  The truck careened sideways through the intersection and madness exploded all around her.  Horns honked, cars squealed and pedestrians ducked for cover.  The impact of the furniture truck smashing into the cars caused a terrible clashing of metal and steel.  Thick gray smoke billowed from the wreckage and a flurry of people scurried – some away from the accident and others toward it.  And in that moment, Amber realized the time to act had come.  She looked toward the beige van.

Arnold
had slipped from the driver’s side and moved to its rear.  He stood for a moment at the back doors fumbling with his keys.  With his nondescript appearance and uninteresting presence, he could have easily been mistaken for a floral delivery person or a utility worker, anyone.  No one would have stopped or questioned him.  No one would have guessed he was a harbinger of doom. 

“He’s already at the back door!  Shit!”
she panicked.  “Everyone’s looking at the accident.  Let’s go!”

Kyle’s face blanched for a split-second before his features hardened and he
grasped his gun so tightly his knuckles whitened.  He nodded and opened the passenger side door.  Amber did not delay either.  She slid from the driver’s seat and, as soon as she felt the soles of her boots hit the pavement, she began running. 

She raced toward the van and drew her gun from her waistband.  She gripped it in her right hand and held it behind her in a feeble attempt to conceal it from passersby.  Kyle did the same but their efforts were pathetic.  Shrill screams erupted and tore through the frenzied roar around the accident.

“She has a gun!” a man’s voice shouted.

“He has a gun
!” another voice yelled.

“Help!” voices screamed and Amber could not be certain the pleas were related to her and Kyle, or to the accident. 
Either way, she could not concern herself.  She had a job to do, and whether or not the good people of New York City ever learned of Arnold’s intention, she would gladly rot in jail to spare them.  She would kill Arnold, even if she died or was arrested after doing so. 

Hordes of people rushed from the nearby subway station and rose from a stairwell like a massive wave that swelled and crashed against her and Kyle.  A quick glance to her side revealed that she’d lost Kyle
in the tide.  She felt a momentary spike of panic followed by an eerie calm.  Kyle would be better off if he’d been swept away by the current of people.  He’d be far from danger, far from death, far from her.  She cared too much for him to risk losing him. 

When she was just a few hundred feet from Arnold, he spun without warning, as if he’d sensed her or had been expecting her.
The corners of his mouth twisted upward and he smiled sadistically before he pushed his sleeve up.  Her eyes immediately went to a wristwatch-like device he wore on his wrist.  And in that instant, she realized she was too late.  He was going to deploy the virus.  She did not have a clear shot and would not make it in time to stop him. 

Arnold lifted his hand theatrically and she watched in horror as his index finger hovered over a control panel on the device. 

“NOOO!” she heard herself scream over the frantic pounding of blood behind her ears.  In a last-ditch effort, she raised her gun and aimed, praying that whoever she killed while firing on Arnold would survive her bullets.  She was about to squeeze the trigger when popping sounds exploded and zipped through the feverish buzz surrounding her.  The deafening blasts silenced the city streets and she watched in complete stillness as the situation developed.  Arnold’s body jerked and reeled, shuddering to and fro as expanding rings of red stained his shirt. He tottered for a moment, stunned and swaying, then staggered several steps and tried to turn around.  His eyes were wild behind his thick glasses as he twisted his body to look over his shoulder.  When he did, Amber saw Kyle holding his gun, his arms extended out in front of him at chest height.  For a moment, he held her with his eyes and she saw a future saved, a future she very much hoped he would be a part of.  But all too quickly, the world around her came roaring back in earsplitting clarity.  She lowered her own gun and raced toward him.