From Westbrook to West Brook

This evening, November 23, I heard a loud cracking sound outside my window.

Something was buzzing and scraping the glass.

I got up and looked, but whatever it was, it was dragging toward my front door.

The neighbors' dogs were barking.

I went down the hallway. That scraping continued as if racing me there.

I heard something snap as something else thumped on the floor of my porch with a serenade of tiny jingling sounds I could just barely hear from my side of the door.

My hand was on the doorknob, but I hesitated.

My heart raced as I peeked through the eyehole of my door.

I only saw the usual holiday traffic congestion. Most of those vehicles out there choking up Westbrook Avenue were probably rentals from the airport, as always right before Thanksgiving.

My house is on 354 Westbrook, only a few houses away from First Street. If you're from here, you know that if you need to be somewhere during the holidays, you may as well walk down First because you'll probably get there faster. Out of towners don't know that, thus the extra traffic jam.

After a few deep breaths, I walked into my sneakers by the doorway and cracked the door open.

A cardboard box had slipped off my welcome mat and my opening door had dragged it against the floorboards beneath. There were brittle shards of broken plastic sprinkled all over my porch. I recognized the pieces as the remains of one of those four-rotor drones that were getting popular with the jet-setters in the downtown area and the private delivery services they used.

Just as I suspected, the box was addressed to 354 West Brook. It's a mistake that keeps happening more and more lately.

Brook Avenue was a row of office buildings and expensive condos on the south side of downtown. For whatever reason, maybe because of zoning issues or something, Brook had been split into East Brook and West Brook earlier this year.

The USPS figured that out, but the private companies, the ones that fooled around with delivery drones and other gimmicks, still sometimes sent me stuff intended for 354 West Brook Avenue.

That stuff was usually marked with weird abbreviations and notices like "ATTN: Incident Response Laboratory/ERB." I didn't think too much about it; I just drove those packages to the nearby delivery office and complained each time it happened. Downtown traffic was a hassle any time of year, and my house wasn't a phlebotomy lab.

Unlike before, the box I held had few labels or markings, just that erroneously interpreted address and a name for the intended recipient: Mary T. Mallon, M.D., PharmD.

I hoped Dr. Mallon wasn't expecting overnight delivery. There was no way I could drive anywhere with that kind of traffic right outside my driveway.

I heard a faint hissing sound from the box, like something had cracked inside.

The idling cars choking Westbrook Avenue kept rumbling away, some of them honking at me as I tried to think about what to do with the box I was holding, feeling a little chill from the evening air and still a little uneasy.

Irate and impatient eyes were on me, driver after driver, vehicle after vehicle.

I considered my frustratingly limited options regarding what I should do with a damaged, apparently leaking package that wasn't even meant for me.

The neighborhood dogs' barks gave way to whimpers, yard by yard, loudly scratching at the insides of their respective fences.

Right next to the sidewalk just outside of my lawn, the nearest idling car's door opened. The keys must have been still in that car's ignition because it started rolling forward because there was no foot on the brake.

It was about to hit the fender just in front of it.

"Hey," I called out, "your car is..."

The driver emerged. His round, aging face was bright pink, getting redder by the second. He swayed on unsteady legs as if he was already drunk a day before the holiday.

His car struck and ground into the SUV ahead of it, and he didn't even flinch, but the horns of the vehicles ahead and behind the collision in progress started honking. One SUV window rolled down so the driver inside could shout profanity at the red-faced man now standing in front of me.

"What are you..." I trailed off as I looked into his eyes.

His pupils were so wide that I couldn't make out the colors of his irises anymore.

He stared, gave a hot huff, and charged at me.

My instincts took over. I dove my shoulder into cold wet grass on my lawn as the he went over and past me.

Over 250 lbs of human hit the corner cedar pillar on my porch with such violent force that he dislocated the pillar from the ceiling of my porch and splintered the wood.

The man's upper half flopped on the steps of my porch and his legs splayed on my lawn. A dark red stripe of indented skin ran along his partially flattened face. His clearly broken nose whistled like a flute.

My phone was still inside my house, I realized.

"Someone call an ambulance," I shouted out to the idling traffic.

I realized that there was a lot less honking going on, and no more cursing or shouting.

The vehicles with open windows now had open doors. Each of them was abandoned, keys still in their ignitions, no parking brakes applied. They rolled forward as drivers and passengers stepped out.

Over a dozen men and women, young and old, elders and even children emerged, ignoring the culminating grinding scraping pile-up behind them.

They were all staring toward me, or the box... it was hard to tell. They just stared in my direction, all of them with darkening widening pupils, sucking breaths through clenched jaws and gritting teeth.

Whatever they were about to do, I didn't want it happening anywhere near my home. I ran to the side across my lawn, still holding that box.

I thought for just a moment about going back for my phone, maybe the baseball bat I kept under my bed, but the way they ran, the way all of them ran after me, the only reason they didn't catch up was their wildly uneven gaits. At least one of them must have tripped or twisted an ankle because they planted hard on the sidewalk, but the rest kept on behind me, one of them trampling the guy that fell down, another breaking the stiletto on her own heel and running out of her shoes, grimacing with dark-eyed rage at me.

I ran toward First, heart pounding away, the cold air making my throat sore, as the last house before the corner store's front opened.

"Help-" I cried out mid-sprint.

The man of the house, bathrobe and all, dropped his coffee mug and ran to chase me too.

I couldn't go back. Whatever was happening, I wanted it as far away from my house as possible. When my wife came back from her final shift before the holiday weekend, I didn't want her anywhere near what was now happening around me... and I didn't want her anywhere near that damned box, either.

I turned north on First street, skidding and sliding in a cold wet puddle that squished in my sneakers as I went. West Brook Avenue was a ways north, but more importantly, and closer than that, was the local police station just half a block up the street, just past the hookah bar, tattoo parlor, smoke shop, thrift store, gas station, and urgent care clinic on my side of the street on the way there.

I could make it; I just had to pace myself, I told myself through the haze of adrenaline. The cold damp evening wind blew at my back.

I didn't dare look back, but even through honking horns and idling motors, I could hear those frantic footfalls and uneven sliding scrapes from mismatched but frenzied gaits. That same puddle must have got at least one of them, judging by the splash and the prolonged honk I heard from a car hitting the brakes hard on its turn at the green light.

I kept my eyes forward, that damned box swaying back and forth in my hands, trying to keep it together.

I was keeping my family safe, I told myself as I ran with the hissing box. That was all I could do.

More honking and shouting ahead, but most of those drivers were lucky enough to have kept their windows up. Those that didn't stopped honking. Their doors then opened.

The wind blew at my back. As it did, a fancy SUV waiting on a red light ahead of me slid its door open with a beeping chiming sound.

"I'm sorry," I cried out with what breath I still had a young mother and her two kids shoved and scrambled out, joining the chase. Her youngest, in a booster chair, was still strapped down but snarled at me as I ran by.

Every pump at the gas station was left hanging off its hook. The people pumping their gas stared at me. One dropped a lit cigarette. Another dropped a soda cup, spilling drink and ice alike before they joined the chase after me.

I almost made it to the police station, but by the time I did, I could only watch the lifted truck with a rolled down window make an incomplete turn, instead plowing plowing over and crumpling the hood of the patrol car parked just outside the station.

Two officers at the steps of the station drew their guns and shouted a countdown from three toward the driver, but the driver had already emerged, swaying and staring right at me. He dropped down the full height from his suspension and oversized tires and thumped straight into the asphalt.

The officers' count of three never finished. Both officers turned their heads and stared at me, pupils dark and wide.

Their arms dropped to their sides. One of their guns popped off as it hit the sidewalk. A car alarm from a car parked at the urgent care clinic on the other side of Park Street went off.

I had already crossed the street away from there and had cut to the left and runn down the leafy hedge wall of Park Street that ran west from the police station. The namesake park over that hedge went as far north as the start of downtown. West Brook Avenue was just a little further beyond that.

I sucked in a cold breath through my grimacing teeth and tried to keep going, no matter how raw my throat felt from the cold wind blowing northward as I went, my heart pounding at the inside of my ribs.

There was a break in the hedges ahead where a high but climbable-looking fenced gate was. I could climb it, I knew I could climb it. I had to believe, had to hope, everyone chasing me couldn't.

I threw the box over first, trying to get it to land on the grass before I threw myself against the fence and started pulling myself up against the chain links. It landed where I had hoped it would. Whatever was in it would probably be worse if I tampered with it further.

I tried to pull myself up and over the gate, but someone grabbed hard at my ankle and tugged, nails digging into my bared skin. I kicked and kicked and shouted until I kicked free, but by then I had lost my balance and fell off the other side and landed hard, halfway on the grass and halfway on the concrete, scraping up my arm and blasting my breath out of me from the diaphragm-first impact.

I couldn't breathe for a moment and groaned with distress.

The hissing sound from the box got louder. I realized my elbow punched through the top, right through some packing foam, and dented and punctured some kind of pressurized can inside.

I considered leaving it there as I tried to suck in a breath and as the fenced gate and the entire hedge swayed and bent from dozens of people putting their weight and muscle against it.

No, I told myself. Can't leave it there. It was going to 354 West Brook, I resolved. Dr. Mallon deserved the box and all the company I was bringing.

I picked myself up and ran once more, feeling my own hot blood trickling off my scraped arm and elbow as I went.

I heard the hedge, and the fence holding it up, come down here and there behind me, but I had a head start.

There was a dog park ahead. The dogs barked and whined and yowled at my approach... then started to leap for the low fences. Some made it over. The rest kept trying. Unlike the people, they wanted nothing to do with me or the box.

One of the owners dropped his leash and let his dog escape. His pupils widened and darkened at the same time a few other people dropped their phones, stopped holding hands, dropped cups and snacks, all staring at me.

I turned leftward without bothering to watch them all dash at me. Unlike the people slowed by the hedge and the fence, they had a fresh start on me.

The cold damp air was starting to taste smokey. Through the hedges of the north side of the park on my side of West Brook Avenue, I saw glittering bright light through the chain links and the leaves.

Fire. Some of the buildings were on fire.

Blue and red ambulance and police lights flashed and I heard sirens and gunshots on the other side as I went.

All I could do was keep running and look at the numbers on the buildings through the chain-linked gateways through the hedges, through the dark-eyed grimacing faces and hands and fingers thrusting through the fence toward me from the other side.

All I cared about was that there was no one else upwind of me.

I was aching all over, my vision was dimming, and my heart felt like it was about to explode, so I just threw myself against that chain-linked gate. It wasn't locked and it scraped open and I pushed past and onto West Brook Avenue with the dog park visitors only a few paces behind me as I slammed the gate in their faces to try to slow them down.

The street ahead was backlit by spreading flames, but the only light still on ahead was from the big white office building with no markings except "Brook 350-360" by the arched entryway leading into the first floor atrium.

That atrium had an entire line of private security guards. Unlike those cops I had outpaced, they were wearing gas masks and unmarked riot gear, shields and batons and all.

They were prepared.

I kept running at them, punctured box under my arm, if only out of sheer contempt for whatever the hell was going on behind me.

They held their formation and raised their batons.

"Stop," a woman's voice called out from behind their formation, "let him through."

I couldn't see her face under the gas mask wrapped around her head, but my instincts, my heaving guts, told me I was looking at Dr. Mallon.

I had so many questions, but my body only wanted breath, and nothing came out of me but a pained moan.

She held out her hands. She wanted the box.

I lunged at her before I knew what I was doing, box and all.

Before I knew it, I was on the floor, knee on my neck, the weight of at least three of those guys squeezing down on me.

"I can't believe those shipping errors are still happening," Dr. Mallon said, "And they replaced my foot couriers with drones. Contractors hiring contractors hiring contractors. Pennywise and pound-foolish. We're can't stay here anymore, not after this."

"Oh, don't look at me like that," Dr. Mallon scolded as she leaned down close enough to flash a pen light in my eyes, dazzling them, "you should be thankful that you had only a limited response to the catalyst. I certainly am. Cooperate and I promise things will get relatively back to normal after we're done with you."

I tried to blink away the glare still lingering in my eyes.

"I can't even imagine what kind of cover story this," she sighed as police sirens howled in the distance, "will require. Not my department."

I couldn't respond. I hurt too much. I couldn't breathe.

"The entire point of the experiment was supposed to be controlled release of the catalyst at a later stage," she explained. "This screw-up is going to set us back..."

I got out a groan and turned enough to suck in another breath around that knee against my neck.

"Your unexpectedly limited reaction to the nerve agent, however changes everything."

I sucked in the first good breath I could, but the pain only got worse all over.

"For about two weeks now, you and thousands like you in your zip code received a compound that was added to your municipal water supply."

"If you can still hear me," Dr. Mallon said as a black bag was pulled over my head, "try to see it as your patriotic duty to cooperate. You could help save countless lives."

The men that had beat me down and pressed me down now dragged me with them.

"Try to understand. You're going to help protect your fellow Americans against the next generation of chemical warfare..."