Neal Stephenson - Zodiac. The Eco-Thriller

It was still there, bobbing up and down on the clashing wakes of the boats, and Debbie was clinging to it.

Laughlin didn't have a chance. Debbie only weighed a hundred pounds and we had two scared-shitless men to haul her into the boat. We hardly even had to slow down. Then we were plowing a trench in the murdered Harbor, heading for the lights.

BEHIND US WE HEARDthe asshole emptying his fat chrome revolver in frustration-kablam kablam kablam.

Debbie was writhing around in Bart's arms. I wanted to take his place pretty badly, but if he took mine at the tiller we'd all be swimming within a couple of seconds. She managed to get her face aimed over the side of the boat and then vomited a couple of times. Probably swallowed some brine when she jumped overboard.

When she rolled over on her back, her wrists glinted, and I realized that Laughlin had handcuffed her. I could feel my balls contract up into my body and then everything went black. It's possible to go into a drunken rage without even being drunk; it's possible to black out on emotion. I just sat there, hunched over like The Thinker, not looking where I was taking us. And I didn't even pay attention to Debbie, which is what I really should have done. This wasn't for her benefit, unfortunately, it was for mine. Thank God the gun was empty, because I was ready to go back, before Laughlin had time to reload, and make the front page of the Herald: FOUR DIE IN HARBOR BLOODBATH.

Things got a little confusing. Debbie was leaning back between my thighs and I was kissing her. Bart was reaching out from time to time, grabbing my arm, steadying the course. I didn't even know where we were going; certainly not to U.Mass-Boston, which is where we were headed. We decided to aim for the skyscrapers, maybe to the Aquarium docks. The people at the Aquarium needed to be warned anyway, since a lot of their fish breathed water from the Harbor.

"They loaded those drums onto vans," Debbie was saying. It seemed like she wasn't pissed at all about being kidnapped, handcuffed and almost killed. She was totally calm. Of course she was totally calm; she'd made it, she'd survived. "I followed one of the vans out west, across Roxbury and Brookline and Newton. Every so often they'd stop along the gutter. I figured out they were dumping into the sewers. The vans had pipes or something that dumped the wastes out the bottom."

"Did you get..."

"Yeah, I got samples. Scraped them up out of the gutter. Real bad-smelling stuff. Of course they've got 'em now. The camera too."

"How did they catch you?"

"The car phone rang. Stopped by the curb for a few minutes to talk and they came from behind and got me with guns."

For a minute I thought that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. "Who the hell was it from? You should've told them to call you back."

"Couldn't. It was from Wyman."

"Wyman? What did that silly fuck want?"

"He was tipping us off. He says Smimoff is going to do something tonight."

"Oh, shit."

"Going to blow up a big ship in Everett. He's got some plastic explosive."

"A Basco ship?"

"Yeah."

Water was streaming down her face, though by now she should have been wind-dried. She was sweating and shivering at the same time. In the dim, grey light coming off the city, I could see a trail of saliva roll out the corner of her mouth and down toward her ear.

"He's got a navy demolition man," she chattered.

"Debbie," I said, "did you swallow any of that water?"

She didn't answer.

"I love you, Debbie," I said, because it might be the last thing she'd ever hear.

We weren't going especially fast. I cranked the throttle back up and asked Bart to put some fingers down her throat. It wasn't necessary, though, because she was vomiting on her own. By the time we were in the Charles River Locks, north of downtown, the odor of shit and urine had mixed with the vomit and the bile, and her wrists were bleeding because she was convulsing in her handcuffs.

The Zode got us to within a couple hundred feet of the best hospital in the world, and then I put her over my shoulders in a fireman's carry and ran with her. Bart ran out onto Storrow Drive and stopped traffic for me. The Emergency Room doors were approaching, a rectangle of cool bluish light, and finally they sensed my presence and slid open.

The waiting room was full. All the benches and most of the floor were infested with dustheads, half handcuffed, half in convulsions. Someone had been handing out bad chowder at the Poyzen Boyzen concert.

This was no good. Debbie's nervous system was completely shorted out; she was thrashing so hard, like a woman possessed by Ashtoreth, that together Bart and I could hardly hold her.

"Organophosphate poisoning," I shouted. "Cholinesterase inhibitor."

"Drug related," said the nickel-plated nurse receptionist. "You'll have to wait your turn," she continued, as we blew past her and into the corridor.

We hauled Debbie from room to room, chased by a cortege of nurses and security guards, until I found the right one and kicked the door open.

Dr. J. turned around and was amazed. "Alright, S.T.! You have a new look! Thanks for coming around, man! I'm kind of busy now but ..."

"Jerry! Atropine! Now!" I screamed. And being Dr. J., he

had a syringe of atropine going into her arm within, maybe, fifteen seconds. And Debbie just deflated. We laid her out on the linoleum because a two-hundred-fifty pound Poyzen Boyzen fan was strapped to the table. Dr. J. began to check her signs. A lynch mob of ER nurses had gathered in the hallway.

"SLUD," Dr. J. said.

"What?"

"SLUD. Salivation, Lachrymation, Urination, and Defecation. The symptoms of a cholinesterase inhibitor. What, S.T., are you handling nerve gas now? Working for, like, the Iraqis or something?"

"These guys make the Iraqis look like fucking John Denver," I said.

"Well, that's a real drag. But your friend is going to be physically okay."

"Physically?"

"We have to check her brain functions," he said. "So I'm going to get a consult on this."

Pretty soon they brought a gurney and hauled her away to someplace I couldn't go. "We'll get word on this pretty soon," Dr. J. said, "so just chill out for a little."

He turned back to the Poyzen Boyzen on the table. Despite his size and PCP overdose, he'd been pretty quiet. Mostly because he was strapped down with six-point leather restraints. Not that he didn't want to kill us.

"Hey, check it out!" Dr. J. was pulling some slips of paper out of the guy's studded vest. "Tickets to a private party, man! Or ticket stubs, I should say. Up in Saugus. There's three of them. Hey, I'm off in fifteen minutes, let's check it out."

The patient protested the only way he could, by arching his back and slamming his ass into the table over and over again.

"I'll bet his old lady's still up there. Hey, I'll bet she's cute!"

The guy figured out how to use his vocal cords at some preverbal level and Dr. J. had to shout to be heard.

"Jeez, can you believe I already gave this guy twenty-five mils of Haldol? PCP is amazing stuff, man!"

"Dr. J.!" a nurse was screaming. "We have other patients!"

"His keychain's right there, man," Dr. ]. said, nodding to a big wad of chain hanging out of the guy's pocket. "Grab it and we can fuck around with his Harley."

This room was so loud that we fled into the hallway. "I hate these dusters," Dr. J. said.

A nurse was bearing down on me with a clipboard. I got to thinking about the bureaucratic problems that might arise. Which form do you fill out when a dead terrorist brings a handcuffed, SLUDding organophosphate victim in off the street? How many hours were we going to spend plowing through this question if I stuck around? So I didn't stick around. I told them Debbie had a Blue Cross card in her wallet, and then I split. Once we were a safe distance away, I called Tanya and told her to spread the word: Debbie was in the hospital and she could probably use some visitors. And some bodyguards.