Greg Rucka - Alpha

“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.