Sixty-Four

My eyes widened as my face flushed full red.

Poker Face Tucker. The unreadable man.

I jumped to my feet and pointed at the spot in the hallway where Walt stood watch. “He’s right over there.”

No Walt.

The guy looked at the spot and back at me.

“You can’t stay here without an escort.”

“Well, I know that. I just don’t know where he went.”

“What’s his name?”

I figured I had done enough damage to Uncle Walt and told a stupid lie. “Bob Baker.”

“What were you doing on that computer?”

“Fixing it.”

The “fixing it” lie wouldn’t have worked with a piece of technology that functioned reliably. What are you doing with that screwdriver? Fixing it. Right … But it would always work with a PC.

The jarhead stepped into the cube and peered at Dave’s screen.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

“The usual.”

“Piece of crap, huh?”

“Yup.”

“Why would Bob have you fixing his computer instead of the IT department?”

I was caught. I hadn’t thought ahead. I had been playing checkers when I should have been playing chess.

“Um … not the computer as much as a piece of software.”

“What software?”

“The compiler.”

“What’s that do?”

“It compiles.”

The guard looked into my wide and twitching eyes.

He said. “Look, you can’t stay here without an escort. Come sit in the security office with me until we find … what did you say his name was?”

“Bob Baker.”

“Like the gameshow guy?”

“That was Bob Barker.”

“Let’s go back to my office and find Mr. Baker. He needs to learn that he can’t leave visitors alone.”

Jarhead walked down the aisle between the cubes and gestured for me to follow. If we got back to his office, which probably locked from the outside, he’d find out that there was no Bob Baker. Then I’d be locked in and arrested.

I cast about for a plan as I followed him. I didn’t know how far we had to walk to get to his office, but I didn’t want to step inside. We walked past gray fabric cubes, knots of engineers, and a poster with a finger poised over pursed lips exhorting people to be careful with secrets.

Jarhead asked, “How do you know Bob, Mr.”—he read my visitor badge—“Mr. Hazleton?”

“Yeah.”

The guard peered closely at the indecipherable blob of a picture.

“Isn’t Carmen a woman’s name?”

“That’s what I kept telling my parents, but they said I was named after my uncle Carmen.”

Jarhead gave his head a small shake. “And how do you know Bob?”

“He’s a customer.”

“What company do you work for?”

“Zariplex.” There was no such company. The easily-checked lies continued to flow from my adrenaline-charged mouth.

We approached an office with solid walls and a locked door, built across the hallway from a window. Wetlands glimmered outside the window. We were in the back of the building. The security guard waved his badge in front of the door. The lock popped with a loud click as it came free. He rattled the door open and put his arm around my shoulder to usher me inside.

The time for cleverness was over. When his fingers touched my shoulder, I spun away from them and ran.

“Goddammit!” the guy yelled. “Somebody grab him!”

Startled engineers flashed past me as I ran. Given the choice between tackling a fleeing fugitive or freezing, most people will freeze. I took advantage of the freezing and then threw some more confusion into the mix.

“Run!” I yelled. “He’s got a gun. He’s says he’s going to shoot people!”

The employees of GDS could either believe that I was a fugitive, or that someone had launched a killing spree. They chose to believe what the TV news had taught them was most likely: the killing spree. They turned and ran alongside me.

There were five of us running down the hallway. A woman in the group stopped to pull the fire alarm. Now, why hadn’t I thought of that? Confused people stepped from their cubes.

“He’s got a gun! Run!” someone shouted. Crowds of engineers jostled out of the aisles. My small group of runners was snowballing into a mob. I heard the news of the gun spreading to the edges of the mob as it grew. Then the crowd piled up as people pushed their way through a small set of double doors. In the distance I heard the guard yelling, “There is no gun! Somebody grab that guy!”

I blended into the crowd, allowing myself to be jostled and pushed through the glass doors and out into a courtyard behind GDS. People streamed out of all the doors as the alarm cleared the building. They moved toward the edges of the parking lot. It was as if I had kicked over an anthill.

Once out of the building, my group slowed and blended into the mass of people streaming away from the doorways. I followed the crowd around the building and into the gigantic parking lot.

My plan, if you could call it that, was breaking down. People were gathering at the far end of the parking lot and the parking lot was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence. Guards stood at the entrances to the compound, blocking the car and sidewalk exits. To get out of GDS, I’d have to walk alone across the lot with all the guards watching.

I separated myself from the crowd and walked with purpose toward the visitor’s parking lot through the hot sun. The mob noises died away and I was alone, walking in a zig-zag pattern through parked cars toward a black Buick Regal, the car closest to the gate in the visitor’s lot. I needed to move fast before a description of me got from the guard inside to the uniformed guards at the gate.

As I neared the car, a guard approached me. He was fit and wore a blue rent-a-cop shirt. The shirt had short sleeves that showed off his biceps. He wore black pants and black running shoes. Soccer? Baseball? Wrestling? The kid was an athlete. I wasn’t. If he tackled me, I’d stay down.

“Sir, you need to get to a rally point.”

I kept walking. “A what?”

“A rally point, sir. When there’s an evacuation, we need everyone to get to a rally point.”

I kept walking and pointed at my badge. “I’m a visitor.”

The guard fell into step next to me. “Yes, sir, especially as a visitor. Your escort needs to account for you.”

I walked past the Buick toward the exit. Twenty feet to go.

“He and I got separated in the crowd.”

“You need to go find him, sir.”

Walking.

“How am I supposed to do that? Look at this mess!”

I waved my arm toward the crowd and the guard ignored me, keeping close to me as we walked. I stopped at the gate. Cars whooshed past on Route 20 in a continuous stream in both directions, trapping me against this side of the road.

“Sir, you need to go back to a rally point. When people start to go back into the building, go sit in the lobby. Let your escort account for—”

The guy’s handheld radio crackled to life. He held it to his ear. I heard the word “Hazleton” come from the speaker. He looked at me, glanced down at my badge, and grabbed me with his free hand. Bad move. He should have dropped the radio and used two hands.

I shook my arm free and ran straight into the traffic on Route 20. I timed my run so that I was headed straight for the side of a car. As the car passed, the one behind it hit his brakes and blared his horn. That got me past the first lane.

I wasn’t as lucky on the second lane. Time slowed as I glanced at the driver. I expected to see someone with wide eyes, braking wildly. Instead I saw a teenage girl texting on her cell phone. I was gonna die. I dove across her path.

Her bumper slammed into the sole of my sneaker, tearing at my ankle and flinging the shoe down the street. Its impact knocked me down to the edge of the road outside Russell’s Garden Center. I climbed to my feet and saw the guy in the uniform putting up his hand to stop traffic across the highway. I turned and ran into Russell’s. My ankle protested at the first step. Grinding pain shot through my leg. Hot parking lot gravel dug into my now-shoeless foot, then I bolted through a wooden building full of hoses, fertilizer bags, and plants. The loamy smell of organic fertilizer filled my nostrils. I saw a clawed tool on a shelf and grabbed it.

I dodged past dawdling shoppers, ignoring the screaming pain in my ankle, thankful that it functioned at all. The ankle pain overrode the pain from gravel cutting into my foot. I stopped to pull off my other shoe, gasping as I stood on the bad ankle. Then I ran for my life. Green carts littered the walkways and forced me to sidestep left and right. Behind me, I heard the guard yell, “Grab him!” The crowd was full of suburbanite husbands buying bougainvillea with their wives. Some moms found their kids and picked them up. Nobody was going to grab me.

I got to my Zipcar and unlocked it just as the guard caught up to me. He reached for me and I clawed at his hand with the tool, my eyes wild as pain gelled into anger.

“Get the fuck away from me!” I yelled at him.

He took another step, but I was between two parked cars, and he could only get at me head on. I lunged and swiped with the claws of my tool. “Get away!” He shrank back and I jumped into the car. He sprang forward again and grabbed my collar. I reached out and pulled the car door closed. It jammed against his forearm.

“Shit!” he yelled and pulled his arm out. I pulled the door shut and locked it. He was walking in a small circle behind the car, cradling his arm in his hand as I backed toward him. He jumped aside and looked at me with hurt surprise as I put the car in gear, spun the wheels on the gravel, and escaped the parking lot.