Brian O'Grady - Hybrid

“Where is he? Where do we go?” the lieutenant asked nervously while snapping the air ducts closed.

Phil didn’t have a clear answer to either question. He couldn’t get a fix on Rider; he was close, he knew that, but he couldn’t pin him down. “What’s down this road?”

“The mall,” the lieutenant said. “It’s about two miles away, but the traffic. . I don’t think we can get there in time.”

“Tell your dispatch people to. .” Patton started barking out orders, but Phil had tuned him out. They were missing something, something critical.

They had made it less than two blocks before they were once again forced to stop; it almost seemed as if the lights and sirens were causing more confusion than space. Phil stared out the window, willing himself to find Rider in this mass of humanity. It should have been easy; Rider’s energy was so radically different from everyone around him. He was happy, almost blissful, reveling in the chaos that he had sown, but all Phil could feel was the terrorist’s proximity and general direction. “Stop the car,” he finally said. “We might as well walk.” A gap had opened in front of them, and the lieutenant drove as far as the bumper in front and stopped.

“The mall is a few blocks beyond the overpass,” the captain said as Patton and Phil climbed out. “I’ve got as many LAPD units as possible responding. The army is sending their helicopters, and security in the mall is looking for him as well.”

The two cops droned on, but Phil began wandering towards the jammed supermarket across the crowded street. Rider had been here; Phil could feel it. Something of his presence remained, and its energy drew Phil into the parking lot. People began running from him, scared by his isolation suit. Two nights earlier, the president had given a second televised address in which he explained the reason for the quarantine. He had spoken with unusual candor, and the American public had responded with understandable panic. Phil saw himself through the eyes of a middle-aged woman; he looked like a space alien in a B-movie, and people everywhere began to scream and run as he approached.

He caught sight of a small child wearing a surgical mask and realized that a lot of the children were wearing them, but few of the adults. It was a curious situation, and Phil’s mind focused on it. He approached the mother of the child, but she snatched her toddler out of the cart and began running from Phil.

“What is it?” Patton said slightly breathlessly.

“The masks,” Phil said without further explanation.

“What about them? A lot of people are wearing them.” Patton looked around to confirm what he had said.

“Just the children.” Phil suddenly saw a small piece of paper tacked to the community bulletin board just inside the market’s doors. He walked closer. Patton started to follow, but Phil put a hand to the large man’s chest. “I think you need to stay here.” He moved into the entranceway, and the sea of humanity parted and began to flow out the other doors. It was a small piece of slightly yellow paper. Phil took it down, unzipped his suit, and tucked the slip of paper inside.

”This is hopeless. Hundreds of people have walked through those doors in the last half hour,” Patton said as he watched Phil zip his suit closed.

A woman walked towards him, and three masked children followed her. The smallest of the three was no more than four years old; she was singing and skipping behind her two older and sullen-faced brothers. “Excuse me, ma’am,” Patton said. He had taken out his gold shield and flashed it long enough for her to see that he was a cop, but not long enough for her to see that he wasn’t an L.A. cop. “Can you tell me where your children got those masks?”

“A man was giving them away when we came in.” She turned and scanned the front of the store. “I don’t see him now.”

“Was this the man?” he held up Rider’s work ID photo, and managed to keep most of a murderous rage out of his voice.

She studied it for less than a second. “Yes, he was giving them out to all the children. The stores have been out of them for days.” A look of terror crossed her face. “Is there something wrong?”

“No, this man works for the county, and the masks he’s distributing have a high concentration of fiberglass. We’re worried that some of it might get in the children’s lungs. You should probably take them off.” She stripped off her daughter’s mask, and her sons took their own off. “Just drop them here. We have some people coming to collect them. Can I ask that you wait by your car until our medical team checks them out? It should only take a minute.” Patton smiled as they slowly walked away. Phil walked up to him. “We’re too late,” Patton said.

“I know.”

He had more blisters now, but he had a mask to cover the visible ones. They had started appearing across the backs of his hands, so he had donned a pair of gloves. His head was hurting, and he guessed that he had only a few hours left. The purified virus worked a lot faster than the native form, but not this fast. You needed a super-concentrated blast to get this bad this fast. He had almost finished distributing the three hundred special masks, and once he was done, he would stroll around the streets of Los Angeles dropping little pieces of death on his way to paradise.

A pair of security guards walked past him for the third time. He didn’t think they were looking for him any more than they were looking for shoplifters, but he didn’t want to take any chances. The infected masks would create a local hot spot of infection, but to seal the city’s fate he had to get the virus airborne, and that meant finding more places like the supermarket.

He smiled under his mask. The bulletin board had been a last-second decision, and a real stroke of luck. Each time the door opened, a blast of wind would hit it, carrying more of the virus into the air. The military had decided that instead of bringing in enough supplies to feed the entire city for a week, they would in the short run use the local groceries, so even after the curfew had started, the military would help spread the virus.

A pair of blond-haired children ran up to him and asked for three masks. Rider bent down to eye level, using them to shield him from a group of heavily armed soldiers who had just marched into the mall. They moved with a purpose, and Rider had a fairly good idea as to what that purpose was. He stayed crouched behind the children as a group of four soldiers passed within an arm’s reach of them. He jabbered on as to how to wear the special masks and made them promise to pass the masks on to someone else when they left the mall. When three more school-aged children appeared, he extracted the same promise from them and finally handed them four of the “special masks.” He straightened up and surreptitiously scanned the area. Four soldiers remained just to the inside of the door, and he could make out at least two more outside. A large group of officials and police breezed through them without as much as a glance. They immediately fanned out through the concourse and started searching the faces in the crowd. Rider felt the net begin to tighten. He crouched down to gather his things as a pair of uniformed officers approached. He had four more masks that he quickly stuffed into his shopping bag and then looked up to find two nuns standing in front of him. He had been so preoccupied with the soldiers and police that he hadn’t even registered their approach.

“Pardon me, but we saw you passing out surgical masks to the children and wondered if we could bother you for some. We care for eight foster children. They’re over at the. .” She turned to point at a shoe store, and over her shoulder he saw with alarm that a woman was pointing him out to a group of police. A man in an isolation suit stared directly at him, and an old familiar pain split his head. The German! He’s the one who betrayed us , he thought. The police began to run towards Rider, screaming warnings and alerts to the rest of the security force. They were at least a hundred yards away, and he figured that he had no more than ten seconds.