Paul McEuen - Spiral

What could he do? Swallow the cylinder? No. If she knew what he’d done, she could… The thought made Dylan shudder. Then how?

Then Dylan realized he didn’t have to keep the cylinder from her. The dangerous stuff was inside . What if he emptied it out? Gave her an empty cylinder? How would she know?

He tried to twist it open, felt the threads give. The rectangle of light at the door to the bunker flickered. Be brave, Dylan , he told himself.

The shadows at the door shifted. Orchid was out there. He rapidly unscrewed the cylinder. Turned it upside down over the grating to dump the contents.

What?

He was pretty sure nothing came out. He took half of it, tapped it on the floor. Nothing.

The other half dinked onto the concrete and rolled away.

Was it empty? Could the cylinder already be empty? Why would Pop-pop hide an empty cylinder?

Surface tension. Pop-pop had taught him how bugs could slide along the surface of the water, held up by surface tension. He also told him how hard it was to get liquids out of small spaces in rocks, for the same reason. He’d demonstrated with a thin little straw, about the same size as the cylinder. You get water inside, you couldn’t get it out by shaking.

There was only one way to get it out. Negative pressure.

Suck it out.

Be brave .

Dylan saw Orchid’s shadow in the doorway. “Don’t move,” she said.

Dylan placed the half-cylinder to his lips and sucked on it. The liquid hit his mouth, salty. He spit it out. Into the drain, spitting and spitting, trying to get it all out.

He was shaking, scared to death. He looked around him. Where was the other half of the cylinder?

WHEN JAKE CAME TO, HE COULDN’T HEAR A THING.

The blast had left him dazed, ears ringing, with a brutal aching in his skull. He tried speaking, but his voice sounded muffled, barely audible.

But he was alive.

He coughed, tried to stand. The air was searing hot, the chamber full of smoke. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t breathe without his lungs burning. He found the ventilation shaft, grabbed it and pulled himself into it, his hands burning from the heat. Unable to breathe, he crawled forward, then pushed out the remnants of the grating and fell out headfirst, dropping ten feet to the earth like a bag of rocks.

The first gulp of air was the sweetest he’d ever tasted.

He coughed and spit, his lungs still on fire, his hands covered with blisters. He staggered around to the front of the bunker, but he saw no one.

He called out, “Dylan!” But he barely heard his own voice.

He started running down the middle of the road. “Dylan!”

He saw nothing at the first juncture. Just rows and rows of bunkers. He couldn’t hear anything. He felt as though his head were full of bees.

A shadow in the weeds on the road to his right. A shape emerged, started running toward him.

Dylan!

He ran toward the boy, scooped him up in his arms. Dylan was crying.

“Are you all right?”

Dylan answered, but Jake couldn’t hear him through the buzz in his skull.

“Are you all right?” Dylan nodded yes. “Where is she?”

He spoke, but again Jake couldn’t understand.

“Where? Point!”

Dylan kept speaking, but he also pointed. Back toward the edge of the depot, where they had parked the FedEx van.

“Stay here!” Jake yelled.

DYLAN WATCHED JAKE RUN AWAY.

He was again alone in the darkness.

He was suddenly very cold, shivering, his teeth chattering. He could still taste the salty liquid on his tongue.

LEVI BROWN LOVED THE QUIET. IT WAS BEFORE SIX A.M., the sky deep blue-black and empty, save for the scatter of stars. The lights from a lone street lamp stippled the old playground near the Genesee River, just outside the Rochester city center. Levi had a good half-hour before the early-morning mothers arrived, kids in tow. The neighborhood wasn’t the best, but there was little reason to fear a mugging this time of day. No gang-banger was crazy enough to be out at this time. Not in this cold. No one would interfere with the coming transaction.

Levi spotted his customer approaching from the north. The customer was well dressed, about forty, probably upper management at Kodak, an overachiever looking for something to fill the void.

No words were spoken. Levi handed over the two vials of small multicolored pills and took the cash in exchange. He quickly counted it, eight hundred dollars.

Transaction done.

Levi waited until the customer was out of sight, enjoying the feel of the money.

A siren started up in the distance.

He had turned to leave when he spied it, sitting on a bench, plain as you please. A woman’s purse.

The purse was red leather, small, with a thin shoulder strap. The kind the young girls carried.

He picked it up. The zipper was open. He looked inside, saw a fold of money. A lot of money.

He reached in to get it and was rewarded with a sharp sting.

“OUCH!”

He jumped, dropped the purse on the ground.

He looked at his finger. Two pools of blood were rising on the side of his finger. He wiped it off and saw two thin cuts before the blood rose to hide them again.

What the hell?

Levi knelt before the purse, carefully picked it up. He shook out the contents.

The sirens were getting closer.

The money was there, along with a few pens, a tube of lip balm, and a condom in its wrapper. He picked up the money.

Something slipped from between the bills and lay on the concrete, sparkling in the first rays of the morning sun. At first he thought it was some kind of crystal, or a piece of glass, but it had metal strips on it. More like a little computer chip.

“Are those legs? ” Levi said aloud.

He prodded it with the end of a pen. It skittered backward, then raised up on its hind legs as if to put up a fight.

The sirens were getting louder. He saw the spinning lights playing across the buildings.

One thought took over: Get the hell out of here .

THE UH-60 BLACK HAWK CAME IN LOW. ARMY CAPTAIN JAMES McNair, 10th Mountain Division, was at the stick. Major Arthur Ricks, 2nd Battalion, 10th Combat Aviation Brigade, was at the open door. This was his baby. They had scrambled out of Fort Drum, a straight shot over Lake Ontario, running full out, covering the distance in less than twenty minutes. The orders had been clear but undeniably odd. They were after a robotic spider. And if they found it, or if the locals found it, Ricks and his men were to seal it in a biohazard box and get that little robot spider out of there as soon as goddamn possible.

Ricks spotted the park. It was tree-lined, square. It was also empty. The local police had established a perimeter. Ricks counted eight squad cars.

“Major. Over there.”

Ricks saw it in infrared. A man running along the river, away from the park.

Ricks tapped his headset and spoke to the brigade commander back at Drum. He watched his language. Higher-ups were also on the line. “We’ve got a civilian, fleeing. On foot.”

“Jesus Christ” came the response, a voice Ricks didn’t recognize. “Get him. Now. ”

LEVI WAS RUNNING NOW. HE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS happening. Something big was happening, something bad. That’s when he heard it. A low swish, swish, swish , barely audible over the sirens in the distance, but then louder.