Class Fives: Origins Page 7

  He sighed and let his gaze sweep over the sheet of schematics.

  I’m going to have to ask for more money, he told himself.

  Roger sighed, glanced in his rearview mirror and gently flicked the turn signal, indicating he would like to ease over into the left lane. The traffic on the Interstate was heavy but moving along at a remarkably fast clip, and naturally there was the usual scattered collection of idiots, darting from lane to lane, slipping in just inches in front of other vehicles.

  Why, he wondered, do they do that? It wasn’t as if they’d actually save any time in getting to their destinations. He personally wasn’t all that worried about getting to his own appointment. It was just another seemingly meaningless sit-down with officers of the small marketing firm he was designing the web site for. They would sit around a big table and bombard him with their latest brilliant ideas for new bells and whistles to add to the web pages, that would allow them to do all kinds of amazing things, and he would patiently explain to them once more that all they would accomplish would be to slow down the time it took that page to load, particularly if the visitor’s system didn’t already have installed the various small chunks of script programming to run the applications. The likely result would be that after a dozen or so seconds of staring at a blank browser, the potential customer would move on to some other site, some other company, and do business there instead.

  He’d already explained this to them several times, and he would most likely have to do so again this morning. In a way they were acting like moderately spoiled children. Having been told “no,” they had gone off to try and figure out yet another way to obtain what they wanted, ignoring his continuing admonishments that the technology required to run their elaborate visions of what they wanted simply didn’t normally exist on most personal computers. But they were paying for his services and he had an obligation to hold their hands through the process, make them understand that there was often a wide gap between what one wanted and what was possible.

  With any luck he would be able to get the point across to them quickly, perhaps endure a lunch with a few of them, then head back home and actually get something useful done today. He leaned forward, reaching for the dial of the radio, intending to find something to listen to other than the blaring, screeching wail of guitars and drums that was attempting to pass for music. Just as his fingers closed delicately around the knob, it happened. A sharp blare of a horn from somewhere ahead of him cut through the morning air, followed almost instantly by the loud shout of a truck horn. Screaming brakes cut through the shrill noise, and then the bang of crumpling metal and exploding glass. The taillights of every vehicle packed into the lanes before him flared bright red and Roger carefully pressed his own brakes, feeling the sudden deceleration of his car. Behind him he heard tires squealing, and a hope flitted across his mind that whoever that was they didn’t slam into his rear.

  But his attention was yanked off to the side of the road ahead where a massive eruption of smoke was boiling up from the side of the highway. And at the bottom of the ugly, roiling, dark column he could make out flames licking upward, snatching at the escaping vaporous cloud. Holy crap, he managed to think as his car finally jerked to a stop and he fixed on the site of the obvious accident, no more than a few hundred yards ahead and off to the right side of the concrete ribbon on which he now sat.

  What the Hell happened, he wondered?

  Suddenly there was another deep, dull thud and a fresh ball of fire blossomed up, accompanied by a thundering boom.

  It was sheer coincidence that had placed Dan and Jim on that same stretch of highway at that moment. They were scheduled to spend the day in Los Angeles County Superior Court, giving testimony, if needed, in the dozens of traffic citation cases they had issued the previous month. Court duty was, in some ways, a relief from the tension of the streets, in others the most grinding burden they regularly had to endure.

  “Holy shit!” Jim blurted sharply when the first flash and balloon of rich, black smoke billowed up no more than a half mile ahead of where they were cruising in the thick copse of rapidly moving traffic.

  “What the fuck was that?” he added, his voice breathy with awe.

  “Call it in,” Dan snapped, already flipping the wide bar of red and blue lights atop the cruiser to life and punching the button to make the siren scream. Even as Jim fumbled the microphone from its hook on the dashboard, Dan was easing through the traffic, which began to part as well as it was able, to allow him into the wide shoulder on the right of the many lanes of traffic. It looked to be clear all the way to the scene. Dan pushed on the gas pedal.

  Roger inched along with the traffic, easing over to the left, away from where the pile of crumpled metal and glass was strewn. It was a tanker-truck, the one with a pair of bulbous ovals trailing behind it that looked like a free-wheeling miniature train. And there were several cars crumpled up beneath it, as if it had jackknifed and swept them off the road into the wide ditch that lay at the bottom of the sharp rise to the hill beside which the highway ran. One looked half buried beneath the huge rear tank.

  His car was barely rolling, no doubt because everyone else was taking a nice long look, wondering if perhaps they’d be lucky enough to see a dead body.

  No, he told himself, just calm down. Don’t let it get away from you.

  The siren that had started up somewhere behind him almost before the wreck had concluded, was now arriving, the scream dying out into a quickly fading moan, as if the vehicle itself was in awe of the sight.

  And then Dan heard the screaming. He looked over, now almost even with the smoldering wreckage, and saw that a cop had rushed up to grab a woman who seemed to be trying to get back into the smoking Hell she’d clearly just crawled out of. And she was screaming, an unholy, inhuman sound. An animal in agony.

  Something wet and boiling swelled up within him at the sight. His eyes flicked over to the smoking pile, and now he assessed, took it in.

  The cab of the truck was half out of sight in the ditch, its wheels jutting skyward, and the first tank had ruptured, spilling something thick and acrid-looking onto the two or three cars that lay half-beneath it. It was burning, dripping flames, and spreading over the cars. Beneath it the burning goo was producing a poisonous-looking smoke that wafted up almost lazily.

  And then he saw the motion. Little light-colored somethings, through the window of the overturned SUV on top of which lay the second tank. The one that was cooking on the end from the burning flames from the first leaking container.

  And then he realized the motion was arms, flailing, pounding on the window, even as the sheet of flames rolled slowly beneath the vehicle. Small arms. Children’s arms.

  “Goddamnit!” he bellowed, the hot, white something in his gut erupting through him and spewing into the air.

  He jerked the wheel, wrenching the car onto the inner shoulder beside the thick concrete divider, and pressed on the brakes, barely maintaining enough control to prevent driving them through the floorboard, and the instant the car stopped he was out, already stripping off the sport coat and wrenching the tie from his throat as he stalked toward the wreckage.

  Sharp squeals of brakes and annoyed horns barked at him as he crossed the lanes toward the man-made hill of now burning scrap.

  He barely registered the cop who came rushing toward him, shouting something. He stalked swiftly off the highway, across the shoulder before he stopped to survey the situation.

  Had to move the truck, first thing, he saw.

  And then he was moving swiftly, toward where the upside-down cab was now cooking in a swath of angry, red flames. He stepped over the edge of the ditch and went down into the growing fire.

  Jim jerked to a halt, the heat now intense enough against his face to feel like an agonizing sunburn.

  “You idiot, get out of there!!” he bellowed, but the guy had just walked down into the ditch, right into the fire, disappearing inside it.

  What kind of asshole would �
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  Then he heard the scraping, screaming metal, and the front part of the truck moved, like the dead weight body of a large, slaughtered rat being dragged out of its hole by the feline that had managed to kill it with the lucky swipe of a paw.

  Jim jumped back and almost fell over as the shattered tank and the intact one that was coupled to its corpse were jerked forward, again and again, until the rear tank had fully cleared the mass of remaining wreckage. Then, suddenly, it flipped, the end snapping up and landing thirty or so feet on the bare dirt of the hillside that rose behind it, with a dull thud.

  A moment later the burning cars were flipped up, one by one, out of the thick river of growing flames, and crunched down on the dry dirt in front of where the crumpled truck lay.

  A few moments later the SUV simply rose a few feet and began to float, jerkily, down along the ditch, moving away from the spreading flames.

  Dan was still holding the woman who had now fallen silent and had ceased struggling, and they all gaped as the SUV was set gently down. Then there was the guy, coming around from the other side of the SUV and moving where the kids were now pounding frantically on the window.

  The guy hooked his fingers to the bottom of the sealed and dented door and it popped off with a squeak. The guy just turned slightly and flipped it away like an empty drink holder, then bent and gently extracted the kids. Two of them, a boy and a girl, neither older than six.

  The children erupted in a piercing scream, and Dan let the woman go to them. They fell together in a sobbing, wailing heap.

  It took a few seconds for Jim to realize the guy had walked back down the ditch, into the flames and beyond his vision. When he finally turned around to look at the crush of stopped traffic, the guy was climbing into a small car in the far lane.

  “Jim!!”

  Jim snapped his gaze to where Dan was moving swiftly around the cruiser.

  “Stay with them!” Dan bellowed, throwing an arm toward where the woman and her children were huddled in a mass.

  Jim nodded, and in a second the lights of the cruiser popped on, the siren bleated, and Dan was bullying his way forward. Jim stepped into the lane, hand extended, allowing Dan to inch by on the shoulder, carefully maneuvering as far as he could from the wreckage. Then he was beyond it and picking up speed.

  Down the road, Jim could see the car the guy had climbed into was already a hundred yards along and pulling away.

  Jim turned back and moved swiftly toward the woman and kids, already pulling his radio from his belt.

  Senator Julian Marcos leaned back in the plush leather chair, propped his elbows on the cushy arms and laced his fingers together in a studied pose of thoughtfulness and pending wisdom. Sliding toward his sixtieth year, he remained remarkably fit and handsome, his features carrying a slight Latin edge, his hair only slightly frosted with gray at the temples.

  Across the large oaken desk, in the deliberately slightly lower chair, Steven Crawford, Deputy Director of Operations for a little known department of the Bureau of Homeland Security, returned a bland smile and opened the folder settled on his crossed legs. Of the two, he was the one others would instantly judge to be the functionary, his bland face that of a career bureaucrat, unencumbered by the need to constantly present a pleasing front in order to sway voters at election time. He, too, was beyond his fifth decade but it had worn on him, leaving him little time to consider such mundane things as exercise and proper diet. The result was a balding, heavyset man whose eyes carried an overtone of weariness.

  They were two of the most powerful men in the nation. The Senator, as head of a little- regarded discussion group that provided recommendations to the Science Appropriations Committee, possessed the authority to subtly guide the direction of research and development in the entire country. He could recommend billions of dollars be poured into some seemingly obscure exploration of little value, and it would be done. He could reject an appeal for funding in some vital sector and, unless private funding could be obtained, the project would die, the research beyond reach. Combined with strict regulations and gently crafted laws, even privately funded research would need his approval or face the possibility of endless bureaucratic red tape that could prevent it from beginning its work for years. He had it in his hands to shape the direction technology moved toward. He could literally shape the course of mankind.

  Crawford had, if not the more sweeping, then surely the more immediate power. Ever since America had awakened one clear September morning to find itself yet again the victim of a sneak attack, a substantial change had overcome the country. With the ever-looming possibility that massively destructive weapons could be used against them without any warning, it was as if the nation had agreed to surrender much of what they had always thought of as a human right to privacy. Indeed, they wanted to be watched now, guarded and protected. They no longer felt they lived in a world where “picking up the pieces afterwards” was an acceptable risk. From now on, they would have to prevent the breaking before it happened.

  As head of Operations at a very secret bureau of Homeland Security, he was probably the most independent power in government. All his plans were protected by thick layers of security, unbreachable by even the President of the United States. And although he had a substantial amount of in-house resources, including his own small, private but very effective military force, he could, if necessary, call on any resources from any corner of the government and they would have to be provided without question. He was the man who would be in charge during the crisis, and he decided when the crisis existed. He would, after the crisis resolved, naturally have to justify his decisions to a myriad of committees, agencies and bureaus, and his job would hang on their assessment of his choices, but in the short amount of time the modern world allowed to effectively deal with any threat, he was the one who confronted it, using whatever means he needed.

  “So,” the Senator said casually, “What did you think of Dr. Henry’s report?”

  Crawford mused a moment, flipping through the pages spread in the open folder before him, and sighed.

  “Didn’t sound like my department,” he muttered.

  “Really?” the Senator said, his tone a bit impish. “Giant meteors heading toward the Earth not in your jurisdiction?”

  Crawford didn’t even bother to glance up, just gave a weak shrug.

  “Not our purview, no,” he responded.

  “What,” the Senator teased, enjoying the other man’s seeming discomfort, “You don’t even have a scenario for it? What are we paying all that money to the think tank eggheads for?”

  Finally Crawford looked up, his expression tolerant.

  “Of course we do. It’s in the K.Y.A.G. file.”

  Instantly the Senator’s expression sagged, his eyes becoming more focused.

  “What’s that?” he said tightly. “Some new contingency plan?”

  “The ‘Kiss Your Ass Goodbye’ file,” Crawford said flatly, then leaned back and truly fixed his attention on the Senator for the first time.

  “Senator, as pretentious as we as a species sometimes like to be, in the end we’re just these little tiny bugs crawling around on the surface of a big rock. We can take little bits of that rock and build things with it, but they are insignificant when you consider that we are just a single, small rock on the edge of an inconceivably huge mountain. Anything can fall on us from higher up that mountain, and as clever as we like to think we are, there isn’t a damn thing we can do to keep that thing from destroying us. So I prefer to put my efforts into dealing with those things we can do something about. The rest of it is not my responsibility.”

  “So,” the Senator said, now feeling the first spark of the annoyance the other man always engendered in him, “What about that part where he said that whatever caused it came from here? From the Earth. Surely that you can do something about.”

  Crawford studied him thoughtfully a moment.

  “That’s true, Senator.”

  “And are you doi
ng something about it?” the Senator shot back.

  Crawford took a long moment before letting the tolerant, dismissive smile spread over his lips.

  “I am not at liberty to discuss ongoing operations, Senator. Surely you know that.”

  Marcos realized again how much he disliked this little prick. He was basically a nothing, a civil servant, a faceless nonentity who shuffled papers and made sure the engine of rules and regulations by which he lived and died rolled smoothly on. He didn’t really decide anything, Marcos mused. He just determined if it followed or diverged from whatever subsection of some massive set of contingency plans, and that was all. He didn’t really make any choices. None that mattered, anyway.

  The Senator sighed.

  “So, what did you want to see me about, anyway?” he said, flatly.

  Crawford crisply turned to the matter at hand.

  “We’re going to be submitting our new fiscal budget next week, and I wanted to alert you to some changes so you didn’t feel blindsided.”

  He swept a single sheet of paper from the file, leaned forward and extended it. The Senator only paused a moment before realizing the little bastard wasn’t going to make the effort to rise up and hold it closer. Irritated, he uncrossed his legs and leaned over to pluck it from the other man’s hand, immediately settling back and snapping his eyes to it, tracing down the long column of numbers. When his gaze reached a single entry, his eyes locked. The amount stood out. It practically screamed.

  “What the Hell…?” he hissed. “You want how much for new facilities?”

  “I believe the number is right there, Senator.”

  The Senator stared at it, disbelieving.

  “What the Hell are you building? An aircraft carrier?”

  “Hardly, Senator. The Navy already has a dozen. I’m sure if they’re needed that’ll be more than enough.”

  Marcos looked up at the other man, his expression now probing.

  “So what do you need all this money for?”