John Gilstrap - At all costs

His heart fluttered like a butterfly as each step brought him closer to death; if not at the hands of the Donovans, then at the whim of his own body as he inhaled the unknown dangers floating in the air. He heard noises ahead; man-made ones this time. The realization made his heart pound even harder.

Why the hell would anyone…

He heard a yell. The sound of a child in distress. Sherman quickened his pace-something else he hadn’t done in a very long time-and he hurried across the last roadway separating him from the foul-smelling desolation of the exclusion zone. The best speed he could muster was a moderate jog, and the out-of-sync swinging of the equipment in his Sam Browne belt slowed him down even more.

He chose to scale the final mound rather than go around it, in hopes that the elevation would grant him an element of surprise. Sherman expended enormous effort scrambling up the steep slope, using his left hand to pull himself up while gripping his revolver in his right. It was tough going until he cleared the top of the giant doors, and then the slope eased a bit, allowing him to scramble the rest of the way more or less on his feet.

The view from the top took his breath away. The world here had changed; an entirely different place than what he knew Arkansas to look like. Everything was monochrome, like an ancient daguerreotype photo.

“Holy Mother of God,” he muttered to himself. He heard more yelling, again sounding like a child, but it was from somewhere off to his left. He moved to head in that direction, welcoming the opportunity to break his gaze from the desolation before him, but movement in the doorway to the magazine itself made him freeze. As he watched, a man dressed in one of the green suits with which he’d become so familiar, courtesy of media obsessiveness, slowly crossed the threshold, carrying a bag in his arms. He transported the bag with care, as if there was something fragile inside. The spaceman look-alike moved carefully but deliberately as he walked to the perimeter of the dead vegetation and placed the bag on the ground. Then out of the grass he lifted another body bag-this one having a fluorescent orange color, which contrasted sharply with the olive drab of the first-and proceeded to flap it open. That done, he placed the green bag inside the orange one, then zipped it up.

Sherman’s mind reeled at the impossibility of what he was watching. When the spaceman stood and headed back inside, Sherman knew it was time for him to act. He stood among the bushes that lined the crest of the mound and assumed a shooter’s stance.

“Police officer!” he yelled. “Don’t move!” But the man didn’t even slow his deliberate gait.

Shit. He can’t hear me.

He tried it again. “Police officer! Don’t move!” Still no response. The man just kept striding back inside to continue whatever his mission was.

That really left Sherman with no choice. He took aim and pulled the trigger.

Five minutes earlier Nick had suddenly realized that he was alone inside the magazine. One second the three of them were inspecting the bones they’d found, and the next, Jake and Carolyn had dropped their hand lights and disappeared, leaving him there by himself. He figured one of the two had developed a problem and that they’d headed out together. He was a bit miffed-it was their butts, after all, that he was helping pull out of the fire-but that part of himself that was task-oriented swung into gear and he focused on what needed to be done.

As he loaded the skeletal remains into the green body bag, he marveled at how small the bones were and at what kind of madman it would take to kill such a small child in the first place, only to wreak all of this destruction to cover it up. One fragment in particular grabbed his attention, and for a moment, he wasn’t even sure it was a bone. He spent a moment examining it, then tossed it in with the others. Better safe than sorry.

He desperately hoped that Jake’s hunch was right-that by identifying the remains, they might have a shot at bringing the real perpetrators to justice. If ever there was a person who needed to suffer the wrath of the law, it was the monster who did this.

After he’d picked up every bone he could find and placed them inside the bag, he found the zipper in the dark and pulled it closed. The feather lightness of the package made his eyes moist as he carried it toward the door, and as he stepped over the remains of one of his colleagues from so many years ago, he realized that in another two minutes or so, he’d be done with the announced reason for reentering the magazine.

Then it would be time to pursue his own agenda.

The second body bag in the grass outside was Nick’s addition to the plan. He’d anticipated the acute dust hazard inside the magazine and the enormously high levels of contamination the bodies were likely to carry. By bagging the bag, as it were, the hazard posed by their package to whoever was going to do the pathology work would be greatly reduced. When the doctor finally opened the package, he’d need to practice the same precautions as he would if he were dealing with the victim of a viral infection.

The absence of plant life spooked Nick. He’d hoped that enough time had passed for Mother Nature to begin to mitigate damages in her own way. Not that there weren’t a few hopeful signs. He noticed, for example, the absence of dead animals. If the dirt and the vegetation were toxic, then any creature who walked in here should become incapacitated and die. Such was not the case. In fact, as he donned his protective clothing, he’d noticed several squirrels scampering about, busily preparing themselves for the fast-approaching winter.

As he neared the blast doors again, he thought he heard something. Shouting maybe? He glanced around the horizon quickly, then dismissed whatever it was as something he didn’t need to worry about. Probably Jake and Carolyn.

When a chunk of concrete exploded out of the doorjamb, however, and he felt the concussion of a gunshot through the rubberized fabric of his suit, he jumped a foot and whirled around in a crouch. There at the perimeter of the exclusion zone, maybe twenty yards away, he saw a man in a cop’s uniform aiming a gun straight at him. He saw the cop’s mouth moving, but he couldn’t hear any of the words. Not that words were important. The business end of a firearm came as close to universally understood communication as anything he could think of.

Nick froze where he stood, and slowly raised his hands.

Jake reacted instinctively to the sound of the gunshot, ripping the mask off his face with one hand while drawing the Glock with the other, bringing it to bear as he dropped to one knee. In the same motion, he threw a forearm into Travis’s chest, knocking him to the ground and out of harm’s way. Even as he hit him, he knew he’d done it too hard, driving a blast of air out of the boy’s mouth. No time to worry about that now.

“Ow, Dad!” Travis gasped, bringing an angry glare from his father.

“Quiet!” Jake commanded. “Here.” He fished through his pockets again for his knife, then tossed it to the boy. “Help your mother out of her suit.”

“But my clothes-”

“Screw your clothes,” Jake hissed. “Just do what I told you.”

Jake’s eyes had taken on that same look that Travis had seen in the school and in the car when they were stopped. It scared him. He remembered again that his father could be a very dangerous man when he was threatened. Dangerous to everyone.

While Travis struggled with the folding blade, Jake wriggled out of his air pack harness and started inching his way up the incline, back toward the source of the shot. Maybe sixty yards separated him from the action, and it looked bad. He watched as a clearly agitated cop shouted commands to Nick, who just stood there, his hands in the air, doubtless unable to hear a thing the cop said to him.