The Apocalypse Script (6 page)

The first car to arrive didn’t
belong to law enforcement. It was a black Mercedes with tinted
windows and no plates. It rolled past the stalled police car,
navigated around the corpse of the policeman and through the pond
of blood before coming to a stop next to Ben and the motel manager.
The driver’s window slid down and Lilian stared out.

“
Ben, are you okay?”

“
Do I look okay?” he asked,
holding the blood-soaked towel against his face. “Do you realize
that you drove though a crime scene?”

“
There was no way around it,” she
responded defensively. She gave the manager a sideways glance and
said to Ben, “Can you come here for a moment? I’d like to speak to
you in private.”

Grimacing, the man hobbled to the
Mercedes and placed his forearms on the windowsill. As he did so,
the passenger side door opened and Mr. Fetch stepped out. The
servant walked briskly around the front of the car and stopped in
front of Ben. “May I have your car keys, sir?”

“
My car keys? Why would I give you
my car keys?” Ben ducked his head into the car and said to Lilian,
“Who is Fiela and what, exactly, is wrong with her? Are we talking
drugs or insanity? Are you two in some kind of cult?”

“
Fiela is friend. A troubled
friend.”

“
Troubled? She just involved me in
a police killing.”

“
That can be avoided.”

“
It’s already happened,
Lilian.”

“
It can be undone.”

“
Undone?” the bloodied man said
incredulously. “You’re both nuts.”

Lilian reached out and stroked his
cut cheek with the back of her hand. “You’re injured, Ben. You need
medical assistance.”

He began to object but was
distracted by an exquisite scent radiating from the soft flesh
caressing his face. It was a perfume; a strange perfume. He
couldn’t remember smelling anything like it before. It was
intoxicating.

Lilian said in a subdued tone,
“You’ve been hit on the head. You may have a concussion. You look
dizzy.” She emphasized the word ‘dizzy.’ “You could lose
consciousness and what good would you be to the police then? Or to
me?”

In fact, he
did
feel dizzy. A wave of nausea
washed over him.

“
Come with me, Ben. Everything
will be fine. We’ll get you a doctor and my attorneys will take
care of any concerns that the police may have.”

God, what kind of perfume is
that?

Ben realized the woman was right.
He wasn’t well. The smartest thing to do was to go with her. He
handed his keys to the waiting Mr. Fetch and moved resignedly
around the front of the Mercedes toward the seat the younger man
had vacated.

“
Hey, fella, you can’t leave,”
objected the motel manager. “That’s not the way things are
done.”

“
I know,” replied Ben.

“
You gotta give a
statement!”

Ben slid into the leather seat
next to Lilian and closed the door, breathed in the cool new-car
smell. Classical music was playing on the radio.

“
Poor baby,” she said. “You didn’t
turn off your phone, did you?”

“
Still haven’t,” admitted
Ben.

“
No matter. Fiela is gone and
she’s the one they want.”

“
Why do the police want
her?”

Lilian put the car into gear and
performed a tight turn in the parking lot, forcing several gawkers
to make way. “Long story. It can wait until tomorrow.”

“
Tomorrow I’ll probably be in
jail,” Ben said, slumping against the door and reclining the power
seat. “Or in court. The police are going to have a lot of questions
for me.”

“
We’ll see.”

“
A lot of people saw me with
Fiela,” Ben said weakly. “Some took pictures.” He was fighting to
remain conscious. “Maybe video,” he mumbled.

“
Sleep.”

“
Yeah, yeah. Mmmm…”

“
I’m taking you back to your
apartment.”

“
Mmmm” he responded from a million
miles away. As he descended into the void, he mumbled, “Why are we
doing this?”

Lilian answered, but Ben didn’t
hear a word.

Part 2 -
September 22nd

He heard her word and accepted her speech.

The counsel of the woman

Entered his heart.

She stripped off a garment,

Clothed him with one.

Another garment

She kept on herself.

She took hold of his hand.

Like a god she brought him

To the fertile meadow.

The Epic of Gilgamesh (1300 B.C.)

Ben woke feeling like he’d been
hit by a train. He remembered almost nothing of what had happened
after Lilian drove him away from the double murder and back to his
apartment, except that at one point an elderly man had woken him to
stitch up the cut on his cheek.

He dreamed or hallucinated still
other visitors. Emaciated women with gray faces and eyes without
pupils, foxes walking upright in Tudor-era costumes discussing
mathematics, impossibly tall beings in flowing yellow robes, and
Lilian, in scarlet, nursing something unspeakable from an exposed
breast.

There was a bottle of prescription
painkillers on the nightstand nearest him. The clock there told him
it was a few minutes before nine o’clock. There was an ongoing
commotion in the parking lot below his second-story bedroom window.
Voices - lots of them. He stumbled over to the window and peered
outside.

His heart skipped a beat. There
were three police cars parked in front of his building. Apparently
the law had caught up with him.
Of course
it had.
He must have been ID’d by dozens
of people. What had he been thinking last night when Lilian had
convinced him to leave the scene of a crime?

But then he then saw the police
barricades in front of the building and the yellow warning tape,
ambulances, and television news vans with large satellite masts
hoisted into the air. There were at least fifty men and women
loitering between the vehicles. Surely his arrest didn’t
merit
this
kind
of circus. His tension dissipated further when he saw that the cops
in the yard below were drinking coffee and facing
away
from the building.
Whatever they were here for, it didn’t appear to be an
arrest.

“
Quarantined,” a voice said behind
him.

He spun and almost fell from the
dizziness induced by the painkillers. Fiela leaned against the
doorway of his bedroom, a spatula in one hand. She was wearing one
of his dress shirts. Though it fell to mid-thigh, he could see that
Fiela’s legs were exquisitely sculpted, shapely and toned to the
point of perfection. They were also marred by dozens of razor-thin
scars.

She had removed her heavy makeup and she was, in her
natural state, stunning.

“
What are you doing here?” Ben
asked.

“
I sneaked in after Lilian dropped
you off. I’m here to protect you.”

“
The only person
I need protection from is
you,
Fiela.”

“
I said I was sorry, Ben. Don’t be
mad.” She smiled. “See, I’m making you breakfast!”

Ben held up a hand. “Wait! Take a
step back. How do you know my name?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “This is
your apartment. It’s on your mail and all your papers. I saw it on
some books, too.”

“
You’ve been going through my
stuff?”

“
Not much,” she
said, averting her eyes, before quickly adding, “You write books?
You must be
very
clever.”

He sighed and said, “Never mind
that. Why is my building quarantined?”

“
There was a
case of Cage’s reported here last night. The first one in
Denver.
It
’
s quite
contagious
,” she said
conspiratorially.

“
Cage’s,
here?
Of all the places…” He ran his fingers through
his hair. “The past twelve hours have not been good to
me.”

The girl shook her head. “You’re
wrong, Ben. You’re one of the lucky ones.” Her countenance was
suddenly solemn. “Trust me.”

“
Trust
you
?” he said, pointing at the stitches on his cheek.

“
I had to do that. People were
watching. I had to show them that you weren’t with me.”

“
Couldn’t you have thumped me on
the head or something?”

The girl frowned, thought for a
few seconds, and said, “Yeah, that would have been better.”
Brightening, she said, “So - eggs?”

“
I’m not hungry.”

“
You need to eat before Lilian
gets here. She’ll be in a hurry.”

Ben motioned toward the barricade outside. “I don’t
think Lilian will be coming.”

Rolling her eyes, the girl said, “Ben, it’s a
script!”

“
A
script?
Like a movie
script?”

“
More like
a
hoax
. A
really, really sophisticated hoax.”

Seeing a ray of hope, the man
asked, “Why do you think that?”

Fiela seemed to struggle for an
answer before saying, “I sneaked out earlier to get a newspaper for
you and I overheard the television people talking.
They
think it’s a
hoax.”

She was a terrible liar, but he
played along. “How did you sneak in and out of a quarantined
building?”

“
Oh, that wasn’t hard,” she said
as if it was a silly question.

Ben stared at her. The girl was
clearly lying about something but he wasn’t sure what, and the fact
was he desperately
wanted
the quarantine to be a hoax because it was far
better than the alternative.

“
Is Lilian behind this hoax?” he
asked.

“
Maybe,” the girl said
sheepishly.

“
And why would she perpetrate a
hoax that would terrify thousands of people, including
me?”

“
To protect you, of
course.”

“
To protect me?”

Fiela nodded. “Yes. You are far
safer with a gaggle of policemen and television crews outside your
front door. Lilian probably arranged it.”

“
That doesn’t make sense. Anyway,
I don’t have any enemies.”

The girl put her hands behind her back and stared at
him without comment.

Ben shook his head and threw his
hands up into the air. “Okay, fine, let’s see what
happens.”

“
Good. Now-”

“
Sunny side up,” he said, walking
toward the bathroom.

The researcher studied his face in
the mirror and was pleased to find that it had taken only three
stitches to close up his cheek. He showered and shaved as best he
could around the wound. As he dried himself, he saw Fiela’s clothes
from the day before on the bathroom counter, and something bulging
from a pocket in the black jeans. Curious, he reached into the
pocket and withdrew a small, tattered paperback book,
Poems of 19
^th
Century England.
Several pages had
been dog-eared.

“
Huh,” he said,
and returned it. She
had
to be a student.

He threw on a pair of slacks and a
polo shirt before walking into the kitchen. Looking surprisingly
domesticated, Fiela was readying coffee. Plates of eggs and toast
were on the counter. Silverware, a pitcher of water, and glasses
were on the table.

There was also a newspaper. The
researcher sat down and opened it. He scanned the headlines, half
expecting to see a police sketch of his face with the
caption
Wanted For Questioning.
Instead he found a small article on the second
page with the header,
Arrest Debacle at
Local Hotel.
It read:

Local police reported a shooting
at a local motel, the Twin Rivers, at about 9:15 p.m. last evening.
Two law enforcement officers were reportedly killed when they
attempted to arrest a prostitute for solicitation. Early reports
indicate that a man, possibly an associate of the female suspect,
ambushed the officer who was attempting to handcuff the woman. In
the ensuing struggle, the woman managed to remove the officer’s gun
from its holster and shot into the police vehicle, mortally
wounding the second policeman. Witnesses report the male suspect
used a club to assault the arresting officer. The woman escaped on
foot and the man left the scene in a late-model sedan with tinted
windows. Police have not released names or descriptions of the two
suspects or the officers killed. No other information is available
at this time.

Ben read the article three times.
It was ridiculous. What sources was the reporter using? Brooding on
the errors and lack of specific information, he speculated that the
police were purposely withholding information until he or Fiela
were apprehended. That was worrisome, but the only thing he could
do was to wait and find out.