Zero day, p.2
Zero Day, page 2
“Okay, here’s the heads-up. This last time my source talked to me he inquired about you. What did I think of you? How trustworthy were you? How smart were you? Was the Biozeme bust just a fluke?”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said you were the only agent in our class that was smarter than I was. And that I could vouch for your trustworthiness from personal experience.”
Carl knew what Harvey was referring to. He had covered for him a few times at the academy when Harvey’s drunken bouts had rendered him unable to do his duties.
“Thanks for the kudos, but don’t sell yourself short. I don’t think they have you heading up the cybercrime task force due to any lack of acumen on your part.”
“Well, maybe I exaggerated your intellectual prowess a bit. But the bottom line is that the fact they are asking about you means that they are thinking about bringing you in on the case. Which shows just how out of control the situation is getting.”
“I thought you told them I was a capable agent?”
“I did, and you are. But you’re nowhere near director level, nor is the guy you report to. Given the cloak of secrecy over this thing, if they’re starting to bring in people that far down the org chart it must mean they worried that the shit is about to hit the fan.”
Chapter 2
Zero Day
D arla Fuentes looked around the clearing. Other than her two partners in crime (if the righteous act of freeing cruelly treated creatures could truly be called a crime), there was no one around.
“Okay, let’s do this,” she said, and Rodrigo and John joined her in opening the animal carry cases they had removed from the truck and placed on the ground before them. Maybe 40 or 50 rats, all told, scurried out of the cages into the underbrush. They were in a rural area south of Chicago, perhaps 20 miles away from the lab they had broken into an hour earlier.
Perhaps “broken into” was not completely accurate, she thought, as they had been given the codes which had enabled them to make their way to the animal cages late on this Saturday night. But whoever it was who had ultimately been responsible for getting them the codes had done a good deed, as she saw it. As despised as rats might be by the general population, they were God’s creatures like all the rest of us and didn’t deserve to be tormented for dubious purposes. Not that she was religious, per se, but she did believe there was a spiritual connection between all living beings on Earth. Given all the harm humans had already done to the planet, she couldn’t see how prolonging the often-destructive lives of members of the species by a small increment was of much benefit to the world. Not at the cost of pain to other creatures, anyway.
Rodrigo and John were loading the carrying cases back in the pickup truck when she noticed that one rat had not decamped into the surrounding woods. It seemed to be walking erratically, and she kneeled down to take a closer look at it. As she did, it rushed at her, leaping onto the arm she raised to protect herself and fastening its jaws onto her wrist just above her gloves.
“What the hell,” she shouted, shaking the rat off and backing away from it. Rodrigo stepped in front of her and the rat charged him, climbing up his pants leg until he grabbed it by the tail and flung it away. Still, the rat was undaunted, rushing back towards Rodrigo, who was ready for it, kicking it square in the face with his boot. That should have been it for the crazed creature, as far as Darla was concerned, but it rushed back at Rodrigo. As it did, John struck it with a shovel he had grabbed from the truck, severing its head from its body with a well-timed blow.
“Let me see your arm,” Rodrigo demanded. Darla complied; the rat’s bite had broken the skin and drawn some blood, but it was not a deep wound by any means. “We need to get you checked out at a hospital stat, I can’t think of any reason that rat would have attacked like it did if it didn’t have rabies,” Rodrigo said.
Darla was skeptical, suggesting that the rodent may have been affected by the treatment it had received at the biotech lab. But Rodrigo and John convinced her that it was better to be safe than sorry, so they headed southwest in the direction of an emergency medical center that was suitably far enough away from the Accelmor Research Laboratory, where they had stolen the rats.
Chapter 3
Day 2
J ayne Carson wrapped her arms around herself as she walked. It was colder than it had been yesterday, and the wind blowing through the hills was chilling. The hilly territory in Riverside county, east of Los Angeles, was warm enough in the summer, but it could get downright cold in the fall and winter. Well, cold for a Southern Californian, she thought. She doubted it compared to what one might encounter in Minnesota or North Dakota, but it was cold enough for her.
She had left the house she was staying in for the weekend with Mika and Becky for a brisk afternoon walk along the trails of the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve, but, given the weather, now she wished she had stayed behind with the girls to get dinner ready. She was about to turn and head back to the cabin when a dog-sized animal walked unsteadily out of the brush onto the path maybe 30 yards or so in front of her.
It was looking right at her, and she realized it must be a coyote. She had never heard of one attacking a human alone, and even in packs it almost never happened, at least to her knowledge. But this animal seemed to be shaking, making her wonder if it was diseased. She slowly turned to walk away, not wanting to take any chances, but as she did it started running towards her. She ran for maybe 30 yards before it occurred to her that she wasn’t going to outrun a coyote, even a sick one. She turned to face it, kneeling down to grab a small branch she saw lying on the side of the path, hoping to use it to fend off the animal.
The animal didn’t seem deterred as she turned to face it, charging straight at her only to veer to her left at the last moment as a large white man appeared at her side, wielding a branch which he used to strike the coyote. If he hoped to scare the creature off, he was unsuccessful; the animal absorbed the force of the blow and leaped up, attempting to bite the man. He tried to dodge out of the way, but the coyote’s teeth sank into his right forearm.
Another large man, this one black, now appeared on the scene, wielding a hunting knife which he plunged into the coyote’s back, causing it to release its grip on the first man. Incredibly, rather than attempting to flee, the coyote twisted around, trying to bite the man wielding the knife. He moved fast for a man his size, twisting with the coyote and stabbing it again. The first attacker beat at the coyote with his branch, and Jayne felt faint at the sight of the blood sputtering from the animal’s wounds.
The animal continued to twist around, trying to bite the second of her rescuers, but it was losing strength as the man stabbed it again and again. Finally, he knifed it in the neck, partially severing the coyote’s head from its body, and it collapsed to the ground, covered with blood. Jayne regained her composure as the men turned to ask her if she was all right.
“I should ask that of you. The two of you did all the fighting,” she said. “Let’s look at your arm,” she said to the injured man, who introduced himself as Ray, noticing blood spilling from his forearm where the coyote had bitten him. The wound wasn’t deep, but she warned the men that the animal must have been rabid to attack humans like it had, and they agreed to go to an emergency center to make sure Ray wasn’t infected. The black man, Terrell, had blood all over him, but as far as they could tell it was all the coyote’s rather than his own.
“I can’t thank you enough for saving me,” she told them. “How did you get here so quickly when it attacked me?”
“We were hiking the ridge above you,” Terrell said. We saw the coyote walking erratically and heading your way, so we thought we’d run down and lend you a hand.”
She thanked them again and they walked with her until they reached a paved road. They exchanged phone numbers, so they could let her know how the rabies test turned out, and then headed back to their car to get Ray to a hospital and report the attack.
***
Derek knew the shot was off as he squeezed the trigger on the compound bow. Sure enough, the whitetail he had targeted startled at the sound of the arrow whistling above its head and was off, leaving him to curse his luck or, more accurately, bad aim. He usually made shots like that, but he was under a lot of stress these days, between the job and his recent breakup, so maybe that was affecting his shot. Whether that qualified as an excuse or rationalization, he wasn’t sure–either way, this was the second makeable shot he had missed today. Certainly, he was a better shot with a hunting rifle than a bow, but that didn’t change the fact that he had missed a makeable shot–and given that Kankakee River State Park was bow only, it wasn’t like he could switch weapons.
“Let’s get out of here and see if we can track some down,” Jayden, or Jay, as everyone called him, said.
Derek agreed with his colleague’s suggestion. They had been cooped up in the brush bordering the meadow where deer came to graze so long that his legs were beginning to cramp–getting some exercise sounded good even if there were no deer to be found. As they stalked through the woods he thought about his positions–if the market fell Monday, as appeared likely, the small profit he had in the November S&P 500 calls would evaporate in a flash. His father would not be pleased, as he had been predicting a market pullback with increasing urgency over the past month.
His dad had a lot of time to form opinions, Derek thought, given that he sat behind a desk these days, letting his son and the firm’s other traders make markets on the floors of the CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange) and the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange). Of course, the old man was right more than he was wrong, Derek had to admit. That’s how he had built Pendulum Trading Partners (PTP) into a force to be reckoned with on the CBOE and CME. Still, he couldn’t help feeling his father liked to catch him out on a trade every now and then to show him who was boss.
“Look at this,” Jay pointed at the imprint of a deer hoof in the muddy ground to the side of the path.
“Good catch. Looks like a big one, maybe a 15 pointer if we’re lucky.” They followed the hoof prints off the trail, heading towards a creek which crisscrossed the property.
Derek’s mind wandered as they walked. He tried to calculate how long it had been since Daphne had left him. That sounded more dramatic than it needed to, he thought. She hadn’t exactly up and walked out; they had talked things over exhaustively in the weeks, months really, before they had broken up. Be that as it may, he still wasn’t sure he understood exactly what it was that had caused things to go sideways in their relationship. Actually, that wasn’t quite true, he had to admit. It was more that as far as he was concerned things were going great, but Daphne hadn’t seen it the same way.
If he had to pick a point from which things started to go bad, it was about three months ago when she had started talking more about commitment. Not that they hadn’t discussed the matter before, but after dating for a year and a half, it was only natural that a couple would start to consider their long-term options, if they hadn’t already. He was definitely open to the idea of marriage, and had told her as much, but it was more the issue of children that had come between them, he now thought.
At 28 years of age, Derek realized it was by no means too early for him to start thinking about having children. But he was conflicted on the issue–after all, the world was not exactly short of people at the moment. The species would survive with or without him procreating. Not that this was a reason not to have kids, but he wanted to make sure that it was something he really wanted to do before going down that path–not just fall into it.
He had explained this to Daphne, and she seemed to understand at the time. But now that he thought back on it, things had gone downhill in their relationship from about that time. Daphne was only a year younger than him, and she was not at all averse to the idea of bringing kids into a planet that was already teeming with people–quite the opposite, in fact. Maybe it was for the best, in the end. He didn’t want to prevent Daphne from having as many kids as she wanted; it would have been dishonest, or at least unkind, to string her along without having a good idea of what he would eventually decide on the issue.
“What the hell!”
Derek’s reverie was interrupted by Jay’s surprised shout as a raccoon leaped from a tree onto his friend’s arm, snarling as it sank its teeth into his shoulder. His first instinct was to shoot the animal, but he quickly realized that was a bad idea. Instead, he used the bow like a club, delivering a couple good blows to the beast. Jayden had unsheathed his hunting knife and was stabbing the raccoon, but it continued to growl furiously, moving its attention to his knife arm. Jay cursed in pain as the creature bit him again. He dropped the knife as he wrenched his arm away from its bite and then grabbed the raccoon with both hands and threw it to the ground.
“Back up,” Derek yelled, as he leveled the bow and pulled the trigger, planting an arrow in the creature’s skull before it could leap back onto his colleague. Even after this direct hit it continued to thrash and growl on the ground, so Derek reloaded quickly and pumped another arrow into the animal, putting it out of its, and their, misery.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before” he said, turning to Jay.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yes, rabies is the only explanation I can think of. Let’s clean up your bites and then get you to the hospital.”
Derek made sure to cautiously load the raccoon in his rucksack before they left. He thought it highly likely that the animal was rabid, but he knew the best way to check would be to have the corpse inspected for signs of the disease.
Chapter 4
Day 4
R odrigo took a sip of his beer, then glanced sideways at Darla, who was sitting beside him at the bar. She was staring straight ahead, not drinking her margarita. She was making him uneasy. Even though she had been given a shot of the rabies antidote the same night she had been bitten, she hadn’t seemed herself since that time (actually, he thought, it would be more accurate to say from about two days or so after she had been bitten). She was jumpy and quick to fly off the handle. In all the time he had known her she had never acted like this.
He had not known her for all that long, admittedly–just 6 months now, and only the last two months as her lover. But in that time, he had come to treasure her for her compassion, along with the girl-next-door look she had that he liked so much. If he was honest with himself, he would have to admit that her shapely figure, superficial as such a criterion might be, didn’t hurt either. But her personality brought it all together and made her a prize catch, in his book. She was communicative but not clingy and willing to take action in support of her beliefs. Beyond that, she had a sweetness to her which was hard to define, but which he found irresistible. He was a lucky man, he told himself.
Thinking about Darla and her beliefs, their beliefs, reminded him that he had to track down Rufus. The guy had showed up a couple months back with all these ideas about taking action against the animal torture industry, as they called it, only to vanish after providing them with the info they needed to free the lab rats at Accelmor Labs. The man’s sudden appearance and equally abrupt disappearance was extremely suspicious in retrospect, especially given what had happened after they had released the lab rats.
“What are you looking at, bitch?” Rodrigo was jolted back to the here and now as Darla followed-up her angry question by grabbing the woman sitting next to her at the bar by the neck and shaking her.
“Darla, what are you doing?” He yelled, grabbing her arms as he tried to get her to release her hold on the woman. The woman fought back, slapping Darla across the face, only to have Darla break free of Rodrigo’s grasp and throw her off the bar stool. As she leaped off her stool to go after the woman, the woman’s boyfriend or husband, or so Rodrigo assumed, stood in front of her and grabbed her arms. Rodrigo regained his hold on her arms as well. With surprising strength, she twisted out of both his and Rodrigo’s grasp, grabbed a beer bottle from the counter and struck the man over the head with it.
Rodrigo tried to grab her arms again but slipped on the floor, made wet by spilled beer, and fell to the ground with a thud. He could only watch in horror as the man, swaying on his feet, tried to grapple with Darla, only to have her plunge the now broken bottle into his neck. He toppled and fell to the floor, blood spurting everywhere. Rodrigo got to his feet and encircled Darla from behind, one arm holding her in place while the other grabbed the arm holding the bottle. She struggled against his grasp for a few moments before dropping the bottle.
She spoke softly, but he was nevertheless able to make out the words as she said, “what have I done?”
***
It was 1 AM at night by the time Rodrigo made it home from the police station. Darla was still in jail, waiting to be charged for killing the man in the bar. Rodrigo had tried to present her side of the story, but in the end all he could say was that she wasn’t herself. There were enough eyewitnesses who had seen what happened to make any other approach fruitless. The man hadn’t been harassing her, he had just been trying to protect the woman he was with from Darla’s rage.
Rage, that was it, Rodrigo thought. Darla was not a rageaholic. She was determined, yes, but she was unfailingly polite, and until recently he had never seen her lash out at people. What had changed? The rat bite; the rabies shot. That had to be it, somehow. But what could he do? Go to the police and explain that they had liberated some lab rats who had bitten Darla and made her go crazy? Go to the press? The medical community?
The shock and horror of the situation washed over him. Darla was likely going to be in jail for a long, long time, and there was nothing he could think to do about it. Well, nothing that was coming to him this late at night, anyway. What he needed to do, after he got some sleep, was to find Rufus. There was something wrong where that guy was concerned, he was sure of it. How had they met him in the first place? He couldn’t remember at this hour. Had they been set up, he wondered? And if so, was Rufus behind it? He had to find out.
