Impetus (18 page)

CHAPTER
22
 

The storm that passed through the city had wreaked havoc on the old police station. The already crumbling roof had caved in midway through the storm, taking with it Solomon’s only way out of the station undetected. When the roof collapsed, it also destroyed King’s prized food storage room. King’s men had tried to dig out what they could, but it proved to be a futile effort. For each brick or bucket of dust they removed, two more would take its place. This put King in a particularly sour mood.

“
Clyde,” King yelled from his faux throne. “Where the hell are you?”

The main room of the police station had survived the storm without much damage. One of the boarded windows
had burst open when it was at its most ferocious, spilling piles of dust beneath it until the plebes were ordered to fix it. As such, the room was cloudier with dirt than usual. This, too, made King angry. He liked things to be as tidy as possible given the conditions, and now his base of operations was an utter mess.

“
Clyde!”

Clyde came scampering
from the back of the building, rubbing his eyes.

“
Didn’t you hear me calling?” King asked. “What were you doing?”

Clyde did not answer right away.

King knew from the look on his face that he was trying to formulate a lie, but his simple mind lacked the power to do so quickly enough.

“
Spit it out,” King commanded.

“
I was in the back,” Clyde said.

“
Doing what?”

“
Um, cleaning.”

King
lurched forward with catlike precision and quickness. He smacked Clyde across the face with the back side of his hand. When Clyde looked back up, he did it again, harder.

Clyde was not so quick to look back this time. His lip bled and began to puff where
King’s largest ring had met its mark.

King
then reached out and pulled Clyde in closer. “You are lying to me. And I do not appreciate being lied to, especially by my dear son. So I will ask again.” He inched Clyde closer. So close that he could see his own reflection through the haze of Clyde’s sport goggles. “What were you doing?”

“
I was sleeping,” Clyde said, wincing.

King held him still. He let Clyde stew a bit in fear before releasing his grip.
Clyde stumbled backward and off the faux throne, tripping over his own feet and onto his back. King then readjusted his rings from the displacement that Clyde’s face had caused. A rude imposition to say the least. He walked past Clyde, stirring his own thoughts, before stopping at the far wall.

“
You sleep when I tell you to sleep. Do you understand that?”

Clyde nodded quickly.

“Now get up.”

Clyde stood. The trickle of blood dripped down his face and made a few wet marks on his dirty shirt.

“We have a problem, Clyde. While you were sleeping,” King said, allowing it to sink in for an extra second, “we lost our supplies.” It then occurred to him that they had just moved the new supplies from the elderly couple’s home. He hated wasted energy. And that entire day had been wasted.

“
I’m sorry, King.”

“
I don’t need you to be sorry,” King said. “What I need is to find a new supply, and to do so quickly. I have had a feeling for a while now that the boy may know where to find one. I think he is hiding something from us.”

Clyde perked up a bit.

“Go see what he knows,” King said. He turned his back to Clyde and began to walk out of the room. “Use whatever means necessary to get me the truth.”

CHAPTER
23
 

The first thing Sid did after exiting The Facility was toss his white lab coat. He stuck out among the grime like a bright marshmallow on a bed of dark chocolate. His intention was to draw as little attention to himself as possible. And a rogue scientist seemed to do the exact opposite. He went so far as to smear dirt across his face and rip a few small holes in the flannel shirt he had stolen from one of his colleague’s lockers. This would, he hoped, allow him to travel freer on the outside, blend in more with the people they had ignored for so long.

He
ogled the destruction that surrounded him. Pristine white walls and organically grown food had been his life for the past ten years. Sid had not been outside since shortly after Colossus, taking some readings that the team would later use as a baseline. And even then it was not for long, just long enough to do what he had to and return. But now he was in the midst of it. He’d thrust himself headfirst into the very world he had been ignoring all these past years. And what he saw saddened him deeply. The guilt he had felt earlier became magnified.

He climbed over toppled concrete support columns and t
hrough walls of bent rebar, all the while thinking about the people who had lived in the outside world night and day since Impact. He had not spent an overabundance of time thinking about them until that point. Out of sight, out of mind, he figured. But now everything was in sight and clearer than it had been in a while.

The wind gusted quickly. Sid turned his back to it to
try and shield his face. This was not the wind he remembered. It shifted quickly again, like it had a mind for mischief, reversing its direction and blowing directly on Sid’s face again. His open mouth gathered a light coating of dust before instinct shut it. He spit, gagged. The wind soon stopped. Sid coughed the remaining particles from his mouth. Punishment, he figured. The world was punishing him now that he was within its grasp, no longer safe within The Facility’s walls.

He reached into his bag and removed the tracking device. A few button presses brought the large red dot that he needed to find. He tapped the red dot, which then
zoomed in to seven blue dots.
Good
, he thought. Same number as before. At least none of them had had any sort of adverse reaction and expired immediately. But did it really matter? Phillip said the patients had five or six days after injection before they died. Sid still had time. But what exactly did he have time for? To find them? Then what? There was no cure for CV-1. And now these unsuspecting people had hastened their own deaths. And he was going to be the one to tell them that.

Ahead of him, past a line of cars that
appeared frozen in a permanent traffic jam, stood a small group of people huddled closely together. He checked his scanner. There were no dots where these people were. Meaning they had not been included in the initial groups that were given the accelerant. Phillip had been careful when selecting his initial groups. At the time, Sid and his colleagues had believed these specific people were chosen because they offered a group mentality with characteristics that Phillip thought would be best suited to administering the serum. Now that he knew the truth, Sid figured Phillip simply chose the groups at random with no true value to his selections. All the initial groups appeared to be the ones closest to The Facility. It would make things easier for Phillip.

The group of four people kept their eyes locked on
Sid as soon as they noticed him. While he’d done his best to dirty himself up, he was a far cry from their ragged appearances. He made his way through more of the rubble, tripping over a few fragments here and there, his legs not used to anything but flat polished floors. He looked over at the group again and then quickly looked away. They appeared cautiously curious of him. He had not given much thought to his own defense in his haste to leave The Facility. It hadn’t even occurred to him. And the more he thought, the more things he realized he’d failed to take into account before leaving. But once he had found that Phillip had sullied his principles, nothing else seemed to matter but trying everything he could to make it right.

The blue dots
remained stationary on the tracker. And thankfully they were not more than a couple of miles from The Facility. That was pure luck that the ones closest to him also happened to be the group that injected themselves last. It was kind of a silver lining, if he looked really hard for one. He wished he could gather all the dots on his screen and tell them all what had happened and how they had been deceived. But he did not have time for that. Sadly, he would not be able to save them all. He didn’t know if he would be able to save any at all.

Covering those two miles seemed to take far longer than he had envisioned it would have. But he finally made it to the base of a small hill. He checked the screen again to confirm.
Seven small blue dots. They were somewhere up there all right. He placed the tracker back in his bag and began his ascent.

Even though the air was cool, and a strange type of frost mixed with the unending dirt and dust on the ground, he found himself
sweating very lightly. It was nervousness; he knew that much. Now that these dots were about to transform into people, the situation became all the more real. How the hell was he going to explain to them what he needed to?
Hey, I’m from a secret place that infected you to speed up your death?
There was no way around it. He was the devil’s messenger.

At the top of the hill he turned toward the closest building. It seemed to be nothing more than a pile of steel and concrete, with large shards of glass sprinkled about.
This can’t be the place
, he thought. He pulled the tracker out again. This was the place all right. He was directly on top of the red dot. He tapped the dot and six blue dots appeared directly below him. The seventh appeared to be on the move. He looked around to try and make sense of what he was seeing.

The door to The Shelter slammed shut
.

Sid
froze in place. He squinted through the hazy air, toward where the sound emanated from. The outline of someone become crisper, less of a silhouette and more of a human form. It looked like a woman.

“
Hello,” Sid said. He put the tracker away and walked toward the shelter.

Laurel turned around. She said nothing, but rather eyed Sid with distrust.

“I’m a friend,” Sid said.

“
That’s funny,” Laurel said. “I don’t have many friends now. And those that I do, I tend to remember. And I don’t remember you.” She inched back toward the door leading underground.

Sid laughed nervously.
“Sorry. I mean, I’m here to help.”

Laurel looked at him.
“Help with what?”

Sid thought about it. He thought of the note that Phillip had sent out. It would put him in company he no longer chose to be with, but he hoped they would recognize the meaning behind it.

Sid said, “I’m from The Initiative. And we have some things we urgently need to discuss.”

CHAPTER 2
4
 

Solomon sat hunched in a corner of his cell during the storm. They had thrown him in there so quickly when the hard winds began to blow that they had completely forgot to shackle him. Not that it mattered much. Having his hands free simply gave him a place to rest his head while riding out the storm. But it was nice to not be bound.

He thought for sure the walls were going to fall in on themselves
when the winds were at their worst. The dust was forced through the barred windows of his cell and into a sloping brown mound. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he’d hoped the roof would cave in and pancake its way down until they were all dead. It would solve so many problems in so little time.

“
Get up, boy,” shouted Clyde as he stumbled down the hallway.

He fumbled for his keys like he always did. Even if Clyde had ten fingers
, it would take him just as long. A small-brained man doing a small-brained task. He then unlocked the cell and stepped in.

Solomon, however, was not in the mood. He stood as Clyde neared, unwilling to relent today. There would be no beatings, no harassment. Clyde had picked the wrong day to mess
with him.

Clyde picked up his pace suddenly and pushed Solomon against the wall.

“King wants to know where you been hiding your food?”

Solomon said nothing.
He knew his silence said more than his words ever could.

Clyde kneed Solomon in the balls.
“I asked you a question, boy.”

Not a flinch. Solomon was prepared. No matter what Clyde chose to do to him, Solomon wou
ld not give in. He was adamant.

“
B-bump y-you lip, d-did you,” Solomon said with a smile, looking at the bloodied lip King had recently given him.

Clyde went to knee him again
, but Solomon shifted his legs to protect himself. That made Clyde angrier. He pushed Solomon up against the wall again, banging his head against the brick.

“
Where’s the food, boy? Tell me.”

And then something just snapped inside Solomon. Today was no different than any of the days prior. The brewing seed of anger had
just grown too large to stay contained. It needed to blossom regardless of Solomon’s desire. It burst into the moment with a ferocity.

Solomon grabbed Clyde by his shirt, under Clyde
’s own grip on his shirt, and pushed him enough for Clyde to skip back a step. Clyde’s face took on a look of surprise. This was the first time Solomon hadn’t just accepted the beating. This was uncharted territory for him. Territory that felt so right. Solomon then ran full speed across the cell and into the opposite wall. He rammed Clyde against the brick. Debris spit into the air around them in a puff of disobedience.

Clyde sank to the ground
with his back to the wall. “You’ll regret that,” he said, shaking off the cobwebs that banging his head against the wall had introduced. He then stood and sneered at Solomon before darting back in his direction.

Solomon stood fast, unwavering. When Clyde was within arm
’s reach, Solomon picked him up by the neck with his unusual strength, off the floor so his feet had an inch of air below them.

Clyde
’s face was a mix of confusion and fright. “What—are you—doing?” he asked in short bursts. His face turned from his typical pasty pink to a dark purplish red. He tried in vain to pry Solomon’s hands free.

Solomon stared straight into Clyde
’s eyes. He then leaned in closer, their noses almost touching. Solomon had been waiting for this day for what seemed like forever. He did not care about a single thing at that moment. The rest of the world, his jail cell, his mind, all went white with rage. It was only the two of them now. The filthy cockroach that slithered on King’s every command and Solomon. The tormentor and the tormented. And it felt glorious to know that he had finally taken the upper hand.

“
He’ll,” Clyde said softly. “Kill.” His words carried little tone to them, more of whispered air. “Her.”

And then, just as quickly as he had picked him up, Solomon dropped Clyde to the floor with a thump.

Clyde grabbed his throat and gasped for air.

Solomon simply stared down at him. He felt like that was it. He had made up his mind that Clyde would die by his hands this day. His putrid life would end
, and the world would rejoice. But as Solomon stared into Clyde’s hate-filled eyes, he knew he could not give in to his emotions. Clyde was right. If Solomon killed him, then King would kill Ms. Stella.

Clyde adjusted his goggles and slopped over a patch of his greasy hair that
had become lodged under them. He then stood, but at a distance from Solomon.

“
You’ll pay for that, boy,” Clyde said.

Solomon took a step toward him. Clyde backed away a step. For as
“stupid” as King and his goons thought Solomon was, he knew full well that the cycle of torment had been changed in that instant. Solomon would no longer allow himself to be beaten. And he felt as though Clyde also now realized that.

“
What’s taking so long?” King asked, appearing from the darkness outside the cell. “I gave you a simple task.”

Clyde looked over, still red in the face. Much to Solomon
’s surprise, he said nothing of what had just happened. He’d figured Clyde would love nothing more than to tattle on him. But at the same time it would make Clyde look weak in King’s eyes. It was a double-edged sword that played to Solomon’s advantage.

“
We were just getting to that,” Clyde said, rubbing his red neck.

King turned to Solomon.
“Well, boy? Where is the food you’ve been storing away like a little squirrel?”

Solomon shook his head, but he already knew that his eyes gave him away.

King smiled. He moved closer to Solomon, his lips next to Solomon’s left ear. He whispered, “There are worse things than death. Would you like me to show you?” King waited for a response but none came. “Actually, maybe we could start on your little friend in the basement? Would you like to see that?”

“
N-no,” Solomon said, anger lacing his words. “D-d-don’t t-t-touch—”

Clyde interrupted,
“Spit it out already.”

King spun around and backhanded Clyde across the face.
“You are working my last nerve today.” He held up his index finger and turned back to Solomon. “What happens next is up to you. I will tell you this once, though: I am not playing games right now. Where are the food and supplies you have been gathering on your little”—he paused—“excursions from this castle?”

Solomon thought for a second.
He had to tell King what he wanted to know. Clyde was one thing; King, however, was another.

“
Y-yellow house,” Solomon said.

“
What yellow house?” King asked.

Clyde
then cleared his throat. King turned to him suddenly, forcing Clyde to flinch.

“
The house we found him at the other day was yellow,” Clyde offered.

“
Ah, yes. The house where we met our new friend, Mick.” King stopped and thought. “So that’s what you were doing there, boy. Maybe you’re not as dumb as I thought.” He then tapped him twice on his cheek with his palm and waved for Clyde to follow him out the door.

Clyde did as requested. He locked the door behind him and sneered at Solomon. He then made a throat
-slashing sign and vanished into the darkness.

Solomon was not done with him yet. That was a certainty.