Christa Faust - Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

“Well, I’m not sticking around waiting to get arrested,” Nina said, pulling the gun from her purse. “Come on, you two. Put everything in the duffle and let’s go. We’ve got to get to the car.”

“But... but...” Walter stuttered. “But we’re surrounded!”

“They’re busy chasing after the guys in the band,” she insisted. “This is our only chance.”

Walter put the bottle of chloroform aside and then snatched up his photocopies, notes, and Iverson’s file, and stuffed them into the duffle bag. He checked around the room for any other personal items as Bell tossed in the cuffs and sedatives, zipped the bag up, and slung it over his shoulder.

“Right,” she said. “Through the kitchen and out the back. Let’s go.”

“The back? There are FBI agents...”

“I told you, they’ve got their hands full,” she said. “Come on.”

Walter almost forgot the chloroform and grabbed it at the last second before following Nina and Bell out of the bedroom.

She did seem to be right about the agents having their hands full, struggling with the vociferous Iggy inside the tiny bathroom.

“I got nothing, man!” he was shouting. “Nothing! See? There ain’t no call to be hassling a man while he’s on the crapper!”

Walter looked over Nina’s shoulder as she paused at the back door, peering out through the gingham curtains of a nearby window.

“Damn,” she hissed. “Two more out back.”

Walter looked out through the gap in the curtains. In the ambient light cast by the moon, he could see that she was right. Two more figures stood in the back yard, guns drawn, covering the back door. One of them was recognizable as the gray man who had picked up Walter and Bell at the Howard Johnson.

Walter still had the bottle of chloroform in his hand.

“Nina,” he said, holding up the chloroform. “Do you have any nail polish remover in your purse?”

“Acetone?” Her eyes went wide. “Genius!” She fished a small bottle from her purse and handed it over.

“Duct tape!” he called, like a surgeon asking for a scalpel.

Bell pulled out the tape and slapped it into Walter’s hand. Walter tore off a large strip and used it to bind the two bottles together. He loosened the cap on the nail polish remover in the hopes that even if the bottles didn’t break on impact, at least the caps would be knocked off, allowing the two chemicals to mix and react explosively.

The use of chemistry to make weapons flew in the face of his principles, so he’d never actually tried this before.

But theoretically it should work.

“Get the door on three,” Walter said to Bell. “One... Two...” His hands were sweaty, making the bottles slick and difficult to hold. “ Three!”

Bell pulled the door open and Walter threw the makeshift bomb out into the back yard. The two agents dove for cover as the bottles came sailing out and plopped down in the center of the yard.

Nothing happened.

The agents got slowly back to their feet, cautiously eyeballing the object. Both bottles were intact but leaking, generating a thready plume of foul-smelling toxic smoke, but no big exciting explosion like the one Walter had hoped for.

“Good try, Walter,” Nina said, hand on his shoulder. “Now get back. Away from the windows.”

Walter did as she suggested as she aimed her gun out through the crack in the door.

“You can’t just shoot FBI agents!” Bell said. “That’s got to be a felony or something!”

“Who says I’m going to shoot any FBI agents?” she replied with a smirk.

She shot the bottle of chloroform.

That did it.

The resulting explosion rattled the old windows in their frames, and bathed the whole back of the cabin in bewitching blue-white light. The sound was flat and hollow, like someone dropping a fifty gallon drum off a skyscraper.

“GO!” Nina shouted. She shouldered the door open, jumped down the back steps, and started running straight for the woods. Bell was right behind her, and as scared as Walter was, he wasn’t about to be left alone.

Out in the scorched yard, the two agents were down on the ground, arms flung up to protect their faces. He couldn’t tell if they’d thrown themselves to the ground on purpose, or had their feet knocked out from under them. There was a large circle of grass burning in the center of the yard, and it looked almost cheerful, like they should gather around it and toast marshmallows. The fire turned their shadows into long leggy monsters as they ran.

They all made it into the trees with no shots fired.

“Which way?” Bell asked.

“Down and left!” Nina said. “Hurry!”

The two men plunged after her down the leaf-slick slope, dodging mossy trees and jutting boulders as someone—presumably one or more armed agents— thrashed through the ground cover behind them. Walter had no intention of looking back to see who it was.

He was glad Nina seemed to know where she was going. He remembered they had parked the car at the end of an overgrown track that led to that burnt-out shack, but he didn’t have the slightest clue where that was in relation to the cabin. It was hard enough to avoid getting lost in the familiar halls of MIT. Out in the dark woods, he was worse than useless.

From behind and above, Latimer’s voice squawked through the megaphone again.

“No point in running, Bishop! Bell! We know where you live. We know where you work. You’ve got no place to go. All you’re doing is prolonging the inevitable!”

“Just keep going,” Nina hissed.

Walter was panting like a dog, his heart hammering. The running. The panic. It was too much. He didn’t think he could take it anymore.

Nina slid down an embankment and stumbled on ahead. Walter and Bell crashed down after her, clinging to each other to keep from falling. When they reached the bottom, teetering and pinwheeling their arms for balance, an agent stepped out from behind a tree, flicking on a flashlight, his gun drawn.

He was surprisingly young, with lots of fluffy blond hair that vigorously defied whatever grooming products he’d used to try and tame it, but his face was cold and serious.

“Drop your weapons,” he said, tipping his chin at Nina’s pistol.

They were caught. Their backs were against the U-shaped embankment they’d just tumbled down, and the only way out was past the agent.

33

Nina let her gun drop to the leafy forest floor and slowly raised her hands. Walter felt a terrible desperation welling up like bile in his throat as he thought of Miranda, the usherette at the theater who would die in less than two hours if they couldn’t get to her first.

There was a quick blur of movement between the trees. The blond agent crumpled first to his knees, then awkwardly to his side.

Behind him was the shadowy form of Special Agent Iverson, trench coat flapping open and a gun held butt-first in his right hand. He knelt beside his pistol-whipped associate and checked his vitals.

“He’ll be fine,” Iverson said. “Go on.”

“Thanks!” Walter said. “How can we ever repay you for saving us again?”

“You want to repay me?” he asked. “Whatever you do, don’t let Latimer capture the Zodiac. He’s become obsessed, and can’t be reasoned with. He thinks Zodiac is the ultimate nuclear weapon, and all he cares about is controlling him. It’s up to you three to prevent it.”

The fallen agent groaned, eyelids fluttering as he struggled to regain consciousness.

“Now go. Run!”

The enormity of what Iverson was saying barely had time to sink in before Nina grabbed Walter’s hand and pulled him away.

“You heard the man,” she said. “Come on, Walter. Run! We’re almost there.”