Kevin Anderson - Ill Wind

A flower of blood burst out of the driver’s mouth, accompanied by a scream that Connor barely heard. He pulled the shift into reverse, backing the car away.

The man fell to the pavement. The crumpled oil drum rolled on top of him. Other gas station customers began shouting, running toward him.

“Oh, shit!” Connor said. “Why didn’t you get out of the way?” If he stopped to help the crazy bastard, he’d be caught red-handed stealing the car. When the cops ran his ID check, they would find the outstanding Zoroaster charges. All because this jerk felt his crappy old station wagon was worth dying for? Of all the stupid things! No thanks.

The car’s owner lay bunched against the gas pumps as two people bent over him. Blood streamed from his mouth and nose. The fat kid swaggered out of the Star-Shoppe to see what the fuss was about, then turned so pale his pimples faded.

“Forget this!” Connor said, then stomped on the accelerator pedal, spinning tires and squealing out of the parking lot.

He could get back on the Interstate, hook east on the 210, then north on I-5 to I-40, which would take him to Flagstaff. If he didn’t stop, he could make it in six or seven hours.

It would take the cops an hour to figure out what had gone down at the gas station, even longer if the driver wasn’t in any condition to talk. Connor could sail right past them. And the highway patrol would expect him to try to vanish into the sprawl of Los Angeles, not head east to the state line.

Besides, it wasn’t his fault.

Connor roared up the entrance ramp, flowing into the relentless stream of traffic. Behind him, the lights of the gas station oasis dwindled in the distance.

Now he was home free.

In her small cubicle, surrounded by identical cubicles in the offices of Surety Insurance, Heather Dixon wondered why the receptionist kept forwarding calls to her. She stared at the pile of insurance claims on her desk. Even though she had worked one claim after another without taking a break all day, the stack of papers waiting to be processed grew two inches every hour.

She was working harder than an administrator. Funny they weren’t willing to pay her for it.

She punched a button on the phone to pick up the call, then held the receiver between her shoulder and ear as she filed proof-of-loss forms. “Surety Insurance Company, may I help you?”

“I hope so,” said the thin male voice on the line, “you’re the eighth person I’ve been transferred to.”

“Sorry, sir. We’ve been unusually busy, and—”

“I understand,” the man said at the ragged end of patience, “and I’m normally a laid-back person. But if you will just take my information and promise it’ll be straightened out, we can both be done in a flash. Deal?” He had a no-nonsense voice that might have been pleasant if he hadn’t been pushed to the edge.

“Yes, sir. Let’s see what we can do.”

“I’ve given my name a dozen times. Could you please punch it up on your computer? I’m Spencer Lockwood, spelled just like it sounds. I was driving my rental car, a Mazda Protege, and it broke down near Death Valley, California.” He rattled off the words as if he had memorized them. “I couldn’t get a replacement from the rental car company, so I was forced to rent another one on my own. Now that I’m back in New Mexico, I’m calling to ask if the emergency road service on my own policy will cover the new rental, because the rental company refuses to pay.”

“How can they turn down a request like that?” she asked, scowling. “Did they give you any reason?”

Lockwood said, “They told me I should have just waited a day or so—by the side of the road, presumably—and they would have had a new car delivered to me. Since I refused to wait for them, they claim they’re not obligated.”

Heather sighed, then yanked reddish-brown hair back behind her ears. It was one of her most unflattering ways of wearing it, but she was too harried to notice. The young college students manning the receptionist desks refused to deal with anything out of the ordinary, especially on a horrendously busy day like this. They input only the routine claims and let the computers bump the questionable ones higher in the system.

“You really should discuss this with your own agent,” said Heather.

“My agent’s been gone for a week, and I’d just as soon get this taken care of. I don’t have time to chase down errors once they get lodged in your computer’s brain.”

Heather took down the pertinent data on a form. Lockwood was trying admirably to be nice, so she made an effort on his behalf. “All right, Mr. Lockwood. I’ll do what I can. It’ll take a week or so before you get confirmation of our discussion and Surety’s decision, but I won’t let it get lost in the shuffle. Promise.”

“Thank you,” Spencer said. “You deserve a promotion for this!” He laughed.

“Yes I do,” she agreed, but she wasn’t laughing.

She held onto Lockwood’s form for a few moments, pondering where in the pile it should go. Suddenly, Albert “You can call me Al!” Sysco was there, rapping his palms on her desktop.

“So this is where the holdup is! Paperwork’s piled on your desk, and you’re sitting around daydreaming. Shake it, Heather!”

She wanted to take a baseball bat and “shake it” on his head. But she went back to work without voicing any of the retorts that popped into her head.

She sorted through the stack of papers. They would all need to be keyed into the computers before the claims could be processed, and Lockwood’s form would have to be vetted by someone in authority, someone like Al Sysco. Heather glared at him as he stormed away, then she stamped APPROVED on Lockwood’s claim.

Smiling, she filed it in the box of completed forms.

When Todd reached Alex Kramer’s office in Oilstar’s bioremediation facility, he found the door locked. Yellow phone-message slips were taped to his door, one on top of another until they made a stack. Todd flipped through them. A note from Iris was on top; the bottom one was dated three days earlier. Two days after the victory party. He frowned.

Most of the other offices seemed empty as well, as if Oilstar had declared an employee holiday. Mitch Stone’s office also stood closed; a handwritten note was stuck with a red push-pin into the wall above his name plaque. “WORKING AT HOME. CAR TROUBLE.”

Around the Bay Area, cars were breaking down right and left—the “bad gasoline” from the Oilstar refinery had hit far too many vehicles, and now fingers were pointing at other area refineries, as well. A few people suspected deliberate sabotage of the gasoline output.

Frustrated, Todd got the division secretary to waddle down the hall and open Alex’s office for him. Todd followed her, as if he could herd her into greater speed. “He called in sick a few days ago,” she said. “Haven’t seen him since.”

Todd stared into a dark empty room. Concern gnawed at him. What if some radical protester like that Torgens guy decided to go after the scientist responsible for the Prometheus microbe?

Inside, the desk was neat, all the papers filed, as if Alex knew he wasn’t coming back. A part of him expected to see sheets draped over the furniture. “You haven’t heard from him since, when, Tuesday?”

The secretary shrugged. “I don’t know, Mr. Severyn—we’ve got so many people out with the traffic snarls and breakdowns that I can’t keep track. I’m not their mother, you know.”

“Never mind.” He opened his wallet and dug out Alex’s unlisted phone number as he walked into the office. Picking up the desk phone, he asked out of the corner of his mouth, “What number do I use to dial out? Seven?”