Chapter Eleven

The Electric Zombies

William Arthur Dandridge knew he was being followed.

Even though he could not catch more than an occasional, distant glimpse of the white van, he knew that the people from Madsen’s house hounded his heels. This caused him no fear. It merely forced him to think and act quicker.

William Dandridge enjoyed thinking quickly. Short and wiry, he gave the impression of being a nervous man when in fact his energetic intellect made him impatient with the rest of the world, which he perceived from behind his thick glasses as slothful and irresponsible. Years earlier, he had decided that the majority of mankind ought to be responsible-responsible to him. And he had spent his subsequent years in an effort to make them so.

Now-on the eve of his triumph-someone had intervened. That mysterious, ragged man on his video monitor. The man with the ursine male and dark, alluring female companions. The man to whom even the police and that quack from Lawrence, Bhotamo, deferred.

Who was he? Dandridge thought as he raced drove toward his airport destination. Who was it that could shoot a heavily armed assault helicopter out of the sky? Who was it that discovered the secret of his microbot so quickly and mounted such a swift counterattack? It wasn’t Madsen. Madsen was neutralized.

Swerve, brake, accelerate. Dandridge plowed through Palo Alto with a speed that in other men would be reckless. His rapid reaction time, though, made such maneuvers a simple task.

Madsen was slow, he thought. Slow and methodical. The microbots were nothing more than laboratory curiosities for him.

Avoid the station wagon. Run the red light. Crash through the street barrier. Speed across the construction zone.

The airport grew nearer. He was going to make it. There was no doubt in his mind.

He speed-dialed a number on his car phone. “Coming in,” he said with terse urgency. “Cover me. Being followed.” He dropped the phone to the car seat and slammed on the accelerator. With a thud of shock absorbers, Dandridge crossed the first yellow-striped speed bump that guarded the entrance to the airport. Four men dressed in battle fatigues and at the ready jumped into the street behind the brown sedan as it roared past. Each toted an automatic rifle loaded with.223 caliber ammunition. They formed a line and knelt to take aim at the onrushing van. Almost as one, their fingers squeezed the triggers.

•

Captain Anger saw the line of men and swerved to avoid them. The van’s windshield crazed under the impact of dozens of bullets. Jonathan Madsen yelped in pain as the van hit a curb with jarring impact, sending unsecured equipment flying inside the rear of the vehicle. The shooting continued. The van smashed its left side against a brick building and scraped to a halt, still ringing with the sound of rifle fire and bullet impact.

Cap threw a switch on the dashboard. Outside, billows of a purplish mist erupted from vents in the side of the van. It wafted around the riflemen, filling their lungs

They continued their fusillade despite the gas. The cabin reverberated with direct hits.

Madsen tried to cover himself. Rock lifted him up, saying, “Relax, boy. Van is bulletproof. The Skipper doesn’t take chances. And knockout gas should have them down in no time.”

Captain Anger drew his autopistol. “Not this time.”

“What?” Leila Weir climbed out of the jumble of fallen instruments and stared at Cap with a puzzled expression. “They weren’t in full-body insulation suits, were they?”

Cap simply waited. After a moment, the shooting abated. Cap opened the rear doors of the van and jumped from it, hitting the ground and rolling to come up with his pistol aimed directly at the murderous quartet.

The four still knelt, aiming their rifles at the impact-peppered vehicle. Most of its white paint had been blasted away to reveal a gleaming, blue-green metal alloy underneath. It was this material that had stopped the bullets.

Cap coolly observed the riflemen. They stared blankly at the van, aiming down the rifle sights, their fingers spasmodically squeezing the triggers. The chamber of each rifle lay open, their bolts locked back after the last round in the magazine had fed through.

Leila jumped out of the van, pistol drawn. “Are they hypnotized? The gas should have knocked them over no matter what.”

Cap bent down on one knee to see more closely. None of the four reacted at his approach.

“They’re unconscious, all right,” Cap said. “Yet something is keeping them going. Something-”

“There he goes!” Jonathan cried, pointing to the sky. “He’s taking gramps’ plane!”

Cap subvocalized to his earcomm.

“Flash-tap into the air traffic control network. Cessna 152 taking off right now from Palo Alto airport. Course”-he glanced at the sun-“three-ten. Ground speed about one-twenty, climbing through one thousand feet.”

After a moment, Flash radioed back, “Got a lock on him, Cap. Tracking.”

Captain Anger ran a powerful hand through his dark red hair and gazed at the horizon. Then he grinned. It was a wide, feral, flashing grin that exposed the twin rows of white teeth in his mouth. The teeth were perfect, except that the four canines were just slightly longer than those of most other men. It gave his smile an animal quality, like that of a wolf, or a lion.

He turned that roguish smile toward Jonathan Madsen. “It looks as if we’ve got a hunt on our hands. Maybe you know something that can help us.”

Jonathan nodded. “I’ll do whatever I can to stop him.”

•

While Leila patiently explained to the newly-arrived police the reason for the high-speed chase that ended in the airport ambuscade, Captain Anger listened to the young man’s story. Rock, meanwhile, attended to the van, attempting to make it roadworthy again. At the moment, he was running the flame from a blowtorch over the bullet-spattered windshield. The heat softened the super-strong memory plastic and allowed it to flatten out again into a reasonably transparent sheet.

True to form, Cap listened intently to Madsen while at the same time bent over one of his attackers’ bodies, giving the fellow a quick medical examination. He wore a videocam headset and earcomm to send information back to Flash at the Institute.

“Dandridge was Gramps’s research assistant for years,” young Madsen said. “They’d done all sorts of work on electronics and integrated circuits. Amazing stuff. Julie would have been rich if he’d been working in private industry. But he only held a few patents. Most of his work through the college fell-he thought- into public domain. He felt he worked for mankind that way. Turns out, though, that Dandridge had filed patents on a lot of the work and had begun licensing the most valuable stuff. Julie found out, but then there was this big hush-hush scandal with the grad student who turned up dead. They say he killed himself, but Gramps had his suspicions. Anyway, Dandridge fixed it so that the college administration suspected Julie of driving the kid to suicide, so they canned him.”

Cap nodded as he shone an intense light in one eye of his unconscious patient. “Flash,” he subvocalized. “Where’s Tex?”

“At the clinic in Jamaica,” came the radioed reply.

“Tell him to be at A.I. tonight. I’ve got four head jobs for him.”

“Great,” Flash chuckled. “He loves late-night brain surgery.”

“There’s not much to add,” Madsen said quietly, not noticing the inaudible exchange, “except that Julie considered Dandridge a friend and it turned out that Dandridge considered Julie a rival.”

Cap said gently, “Son…”

Jonathan frowned a bit at the term-it seemed quaintly old-fashioned for the stranger to use it.

“I think Dr. Madsen was the man who walked into that Los Gatos diner. His physical description matches that given by the waitress-short, grey hair, goatee. Dandridge injected him with microscopic robots. That’s what killed him.” He stopped examining the rigid, insensate body on the sidewalk and looked at Jonathan.

“Where was your grandfather these last four months?”

The young man spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t know. When he called me last night, all he said was ‘I’ve seen Hell in the Pacific.’ Then he hung up. That’s when I decided to go for the safe.” He glanced at the four fallen men, the position of their rifles on the street outlined in yellow chalk by the police. One cop was intent on circling the location of every brass casing ejected by the weapons. Another officer snapped digital photos of the scene.

Cap nodded. “With your permission, I’d like to examine the disc.”

Madsen nodded. Cap again murmured just loud enough for his earcomm to detect. To the young man, it looked as if Cap were merely pausing to think, except that his throat pulsed irregularly as he created the imperceptible tones. The strong muscles of his neck hid most of the movement, leaving Jonathan with no clue that Captain Anger maintained constant communication with his aides. “Lei, if you’re through sweettalking Detective Fleming, let’s get these zombies back to A.I. for Tex to examine. Flash-call the team together, no later than midnight tonight. Tell them this is big.”

“Roger.”

“And where’s that plane headed?”

“He headed out over the ocean, then dropped down below radar coverage, probably to turn and throw us off track. I’m trying to connect with satellite lookdown radar now, but I may have lost him.”

“Roger,” Cap said quietly.

Leila raised her voice loud enough for all to hear.

“I don’t care what police procedure is, these men need immediate and sophisticated medical attention! Dr. Uriah West is the finest neurosurgeon in the world. Ask any doctor above the rank of arrant quack!”

Fleming cleared his throat. While his eyes drank in the curvacious Leila Weir, his attention drifted from the subject of brain surgery. He shook his head after a moment and said, “I can’t release these men to anyone but qualified paramedics. Those guys.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of two red ambulances.

Leila smiled, excused herself, and strolled over to the gawking paramedics.

“Ready to roll!” Rock hollered. He bent the left front fender away from the tire with his thick, bare hands. The wheels pointed straight and the engine idled unharmed. The tires had a few bullet holes in them, but that made little difference: instead of air, they kept their shape by means of rigid sidewalls and closed-cell plastic foam, almost as light and cushiony as air, but safe from blowouts.

Even in its battered shape, the van possessed power and speed. Its engine roared into life, making a sound subtly different from an ordinary automobile engine.

Captain Anger laid a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “You’d better be getting back to your parents.”

“They’re in Europe,” he said. “Besides, I have a right to see what’s on that disk.”

Cap nodded. “All right. You’ll fly in my jet.”

“Sweet!” Johnny said with awe.

Leila’s voice murmured in Cap’s ear, “The paramedics know where to take the patients. Let’s hit the road.”

“Agreed,” Cap said.

Cap and Rock exchanged places, Cap maneuvering the van onto the street and Rock in the back with Leila, checking the condition of equipment. Jonathan sat in the creme-white passenger’s seat and watched the extraordinary man to his left perform the ordinary act of driving.

Captain Richard Anger handled the vehicle with supreme ease and quiet efficiency. He gave as much concentration to it as he did to flying an aircraft or piloting a ship. It was his nature to use his abilities to their utmost in any endeavor, even when events split his attentions three ways and more.

The act of driving calmed him. The constant forward motion, the awareness of heading somewhere, of adventure laying ahead of him, brought him peace.

Jonathan Madsen wondered how such a man could exist in the world of today. All he had ever seen in the few years of his life had been men and women of compromise: school teachers more interested in silence than in curiosity; store employees who viewed every teenager as a potential shoplifter; celebrities and even presidents whose confused personal lives tabloid magazines exposed with morbid glee.

Here he sat next to a hero whose name he had never heard before. A man who could follow him out a second-story window and land on his feet. A man who could crack a safe yet asked a kid’s permission to take its contents. A man with friends as quietly competent as he, who apparently traveled the world yet who-without hesitation-interrupted their personal and professional lives to give aid to strangers, to battle enormous evil without so much as a thought of the risk. A man and companions who thrived on danger, who sought it out where others would flee.

The only hero Jonathan had known in his life had been his grandfather. Julie also hearkened to another age, an earlier time when a man could still live a life heroically without bowing to the pressures all around him.

In the driver’s seat, though, sat a man one-third Gramps’s age who embodied all things heroic from ages long past. He was the last of the heroes, Jonathan marveled. Or perhaps, he thought with hope, the first of their return!