The Collective Protocol Page 4

  “The United States has a global responsibility to safeguard against terrorists, Miss Weston. We don’t need permission to access a database when it comes to matters of national security,” Agent Quintana stated.

  “Whoa. Are we still talking about Reagan Lockhart and a mass hysteria event here or are you trying to implicate her in something bigger?”

  “Miss Lockhart isn’t implicated in anything right now,” Quintana said. “We’re just trying to establish her location.”

  “Okay, we’ve done that. She was at home and you have a picture of a girl who looks like her. Next question.”

  The two officers looked at each other and then Quintana asked, “Do you have any pets, Miss Lockhart?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Erin ordered. “Why does it matter if she has any pets?”

  “No, it’s okay,” Reagan said. “Yes, we have a cat.”

  “Has your animal ever attacked anyone?” Simms asked.

  She thought for a moment, “Not that I can remember.”

  “Do you know anything about the events in Alabama and Georgia over the past couple of days?”

  Erin held up both hands. “Wait. Events in Alabama? You were just asking her about being in Canada. What’s going on here?”

  “What events?” Reagan asked, ignoring her lawyer.

  “Animals are attacking humans all over the state. It’s been on the news,” Simms answered.

  “I haven’t seen much about it, really.”

  “So far thousands of people have been injured. Lots of fatalities as well,” Quintana stated. “Possibly as many as a thousand people have died so far.”

  “Oh my gosh!” Reagan exclaimed. “That many people have died from animal attacks?”

  “The animals go crazy and begin attacking in packs. They kill whatever is around them,” Quintana replied.

  “Kind of like the partiers at the Razor’s Edge,” Simms cut in.

  “Are you saying that the people at the club had rabies, like those animals down there?” the girl asked.

  “The animals don’t have rabies. They’ve done extensive testing on them. There are no signs of any abnormal diseases in the creatures. They’ve just gone crazy and begun killing indiscriminately.”

  “Just like the people at the club!” Reagan exclaimed.

  “Exactly. Don’t you think it’s strange?” Simms asked.

  “What are you trying to get out of my client, detectives?” Erin asked. “Because frankly, I don’t understand why you’re asking her about these things.”

  “We wanted to know what she knew about the animal attacks and determine whether she’d been out of the country recently,” Agent Quintana replied straight-faced.

  “And I think that you’ve determined that she doesn’t have any idea about either. I think it’s reprehensible that you’ve treated her this way for alerting the authorities about the incident at the club.”

  “Don’t you find it strange that besides the doorman, everyone in the club turned into a violence-crazed animal?” Simms asked.

  An idea hit Reagan and she blurted out, “Wait! Slade wasn’t affected. I’d forgotten that. The vestibule that he works in has soundproofing blankets all around it to keep the noise from bothering the neighborhood.”

  “I’m listening,” Simms rolled his hand to keep her talking.

  “I always wear earplugs in the club. See, I wear these,” she reached into her bag and dug out the earplugs that she’d been wearing that night. Reagan held them up for everyone to see. “I don’t want my hearing to get damaged while I’m filming the footage for my blog so I wear earplugs. Maybe we were exposed to something in the music or some type of sound signal or something.”

  “Hmm… We’ll have to test the CDs or records or whatever they used at the club for some type of signal,” Simms replied. “We hadn’t thought of that. Everything that we’d looked at so far was some type of chemical attack either through the drinks that people consumed or from some other means of delivery.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t make any sense about the animals all the way down in Alabama,” Reagan stated.

  “You’re right,” Agent Quintana said. “But there was only a slim possibility that the two were related anyways. It just seemed too convenient that both of them happened a few days apart. Maybe it is just a coincidence.”

  “Alright, seems like you’ve got some work to do. Is Miss Lockhart free to go?” the lawyer asked.

  “I believe so. Those were the two things that we wanted to ask her and she has given us a lead that we hadn’t thought about,” Simms replied.

  Erin stood up and said, “Let’s go, Reagan. Your father is in the lobby waiting for us.”

  Both officers offered to drive Reagan home, but she declined since her father was at the station. As she walked out into the waiting area, Garrett Lockhart stood up and rushed over to her. He wrapped her in a bear hug that left the girl in need of a big breath of air.

  “What was that all about?” he asked the lawyer.

  “It’s best that we leave and we can talk about it on the way back to my office,” Erin answered.

  “Okay, let me grab my jacket and we can be on our way. Are you alright, honey?”

  “Yeah, Dad. I’m fine. I just want to get out of this place and take a shower. I’m feeling really skeeved out by the place.”

  “Of course. Whatever you need, honey,” the older Lockhart said. He went to his chair and grabbed his jacket and book. When he returned to the two women he said, “Thank you for being there for us, Erin. When Reagan called and said that the FBI wanted to talk to her, I didn’t know what to do.”

  Several of the city’s residents, sitting within earshot of the trio in the waiting room, made comments about Reagan being a bad girl and other, less savory statements about her character since the FBI was involved. Erin Weston shot a worried look into the assembled group of people and said, “Like I said, it’s best if we talk about this out of the station. There’s a lot more privacy that way.”

  The three of them exited the police station quickly. The wind was already beginning to pick up and it carried a chill with it that seemed too cold for early October.

  SIX

  “Geez, that was a rough shift,” Pamela told her partner Andrew.

  “You’re tellin’ me. I can’t wait to get home and crack open a beer, let off a little steam, you know?” the officer replied.

  Pam and Andrew had been partners for a little over eight months. They worked the 4 p.m. to midnight shift five days a week, Friday through Tuesday, in the wild desert oasis of Las Vegas. There’d been maybe a handful of times since they’d been patrolling together that either one of them could legitimately say that they’d had a quiet night. The Vegas neighborhoods that they worked, just a few blocks from the strip, were anything but boring.

  They thought that they’d seen it all until tonight. Something was causing every dog and cat in the city to go insane. Maybe the heat had finally gotten to them, like the commissioner suggested, but it didn’t make any sense. What would cause all the animals in town to begin attacking people? Pam shuddered to think of the number of dogs that she’d been forced to put down in the past eight hours.

  Several animals had gotten close enough that both officers had blood on their uniforms from the blowback of the round. It was disgusting and heart wrenching work. They didn’t even have time to properly document all the rounds that they’d fired and the county had temporarily suspended the requirement to file paperwork within twenty-four hours of all events. There were just too many things happening right now and the department was in full-on reaction mode.

  “Any word when the coroner will figure out what’s going on out here?” she asked her partner wearily.

  “Nah, they’ve got no clue. The coroner is working closely with several veterinarians in the county, but they’ve got nothing. So far, they think it’s some new strain of rabies, maybe Lyme disease.”

  “Som is it the same thing that’s happening in
the southeast?”

  “Got me, Pam. I just work here. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Same bad time, same bad channel,” she called after Andrew’s retreating form.

  She wandered into the women’s locker room and sat heavily on the wooden bench in front of her locker. God, she was tired. She looked forward to the shower and then vegging out on the couch with the news off in a pair of sweat pants and a bucket of ice cream.

  Before long she was driving down the back streets of Sin City towards her home. Most people would have taken the longer route on the highway, but she patrolled these streets every day and the pushers and gang bangers all knew who she was, so they left the single white woman alone. The streets were eerily vacant and even stranger, the city was quiet. Usually at this time of night there were street walkers, partiers who’d wandered too far off the strip, drug dealers and kids blaring music from cars that they had no business driving.

  She pulled up to a stop sign and rolled down her window enough to allow the sounds of the city in. The only noises she heard were far-off sirens and the occasional report from a gun being fired. Pam felt naked without her uniform on at that moment. She still had her gun, but the city was under siege and she didn’t think that they’d be able to survive without discovering what was causing the animals all over the United States to turn on humans.

  She continued through the neighborhood until the street opened up to a transitional area and before long she turned onto the road that led to her suburban home. Pam pulled into her driveway and scanned the area surrounding her vehicle. She’d been through too much today to be caught unaware by a dog waiting to jump out at her.

  When she was satisfied that the way was clear, she stepped out of her car and jogged to her front door. After a few attempts to fit the key into the slot, she forced herself to settle down and slid it in. The bolt slid from the door jamb and she pushed her way inside. She felt completely ridiculous for being so paranoid at her own home, but after the day she’d had, it was expected.

  The first thing she did was open her pantry and pull out the plastic bottle of Fireball whiskey. She needed something to calm her nerves and took a slug directly from the bottle. The sweet, fiery cinnamon burned down the back of her throat and she licked the sugary sweetness from her lips. The liquid warmth spread quickly through her belly and she took another belt of the liquor.

  Pam wasn’t an alcoholic, but there were days that she needed a drink to help calm her nerves. Days like today—actually, there had never been a day like today in her career. If she got a little tipsy as a coping mechanism this one time, then there was nothing wrong with it. She took another shot of the whiskey and started to feel a little queasy from the sugary mixture.

  The face of one particularly cute dog surged to the forefront of her memory. The Labradoodle’s furry face was covered in the blood of its former owners. The designer canine must have been the family’s pride and joy before the incident. Pam remembered vividly how the bows on the dog’s ears had gone flying in slow motion when its head was obliterated by her partner’s shot. She took one final shot of Fireball then screwed the cap back on the bottle and replaced it. When she put it in the cabinet she closed it softly and leaned heavily against the countertop. The emotions from throughout the day caught up with her and she sighed heavily. She didn’t cry though and she considered that a win.

  She straightened up and was suddenly extremely tired. She looked bleary-eyed around the kitchen and decided that she’d go lie down on the couch and put on some reality television. That way it wouldn’t matter if she fell asleep and missed a portion of the show.

  The police officer settled deeply into her couch and picked up the remote. She flipped through the channels until it landed on something sufficiently mind-numbing that it didn’t require any attention. Pam stared blankly at the television for a while and then drifted off to sleep.

  *****

  A noise in the back yard woke Pam up from her alcohol- and stress-induced nap. She rubbed her eyes hard in an effort to clear away the crust that had built up on her eyelashes. What the hell was that? she asked herself groggily. The clock on her DVR showed that it was 3:34 a.m., well past the time of night when anyone up to any good was out and about.

  She stared into the darkness of her back yard and tried to discern any movement and couldn’t see anything. Did I imagine it? Maybe I had a dream and just woke myself up, she reasoned with herself. Another loud crash came from the back yard and Pam realized that it was one of the clay pots that she had sitting off the ground on a shelf along the fence. Someone was trying to get inside her yard! The city’s sleazy underbelly was using the mass confusion caused by the animal attacks to rise up and profit from everyone’s misfortune.

  The officer reached to her hip for her pistol and realized that she was in civilian clothes. She staggered to the kitchen where she’d dropped her keys and went straight to the liquor cabinet. The decision to take those four or five shots weighed heavily on her mind as the kitchen seemed to swim before her eyes. She looked everywhere for the gun, but it wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Pam even looked in the cabinet where she kept the whiskey.

  Suddenly, she remembered that it sat in her passenger seat. She’d been so worried that an animal would jump out of the darkness at her that she left it there in her haste to get inside. How could I have been so stupid? Leaving your weapon in your vehicle, especially in plain sight was a major offense in the department and she would likely lose her job if anyone found out. To top that, she had an intruder in her yard and the weapon was sitting useless in the car.

  Pam made the decision to go out and retrieve it. She’d show whoever that was in her yard that you didn’t mess with an officer from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. She cast around her kitchen for a weapon to defend herself between the front door and her car until her eyes settled on a large kitchen knife. When she picked it up and tested its weight, she quickly discarded the idea. That might work in the movies, but to effectively use a knife you had to let an attacker well within your safety zone and you could easily be disarmed.

  She continued scanning until her attention was drawn into the family room. The fireplace poker would serve her needs perfectly. It gave her a little bit of standoff distance while also giving her a sharp edge to poke the potential assailant with. She swung it around experimentally a few times to get the feel of the weapon and clumsily banged it into her wall. Maybe having so much to drink during this crisis hadn’t been such a good idea.

  Pam wiped her eyes one more time and grabbed her key fob. She tapped the unlock button twice to ensure that the passenger door was open and dropped the keys on the floor. It was better to not be encumbered by the keys and risk losing her grip on the poker. She quickly peeked through the peephole and didn’t’ see anyone out front so she took a breath and opened the door.

  A man jumped up and swung a fist right into her stomach. He’d been trying to pick the lock and was out of sight from the fisheye lens in the door. As she doubled over she thrust the poker straight out and it embedded in the man’s shin. He screamed in pain and fell backwards away from the door onto her front porch.

  The officer reacted instantly and went through the doorway and landed with both knees on his chest. He coughed out all the air in his lungs and tried to turn over to protect himself. The alcohol worked against Pam and she fell awkwardly off the would-be burglar and hit the metal porch railing hard enough to draw blood where her back impacted with it.

  She tried to stand but her legs refused to respond and she watched in terror as the black-masked assailant yanked the poker from his leg and stood over her. He raised it high above his head and she cowered in a panic thinking that this was it; she was going to die.

  A gray streak shot in front of her with a snarl and impacted into her attacker’s side hard enough to knock him sideways against the opposite railing. The fireplace poker fell to the concrete with a metallic ring that echoed through the neighborhood along with the b
urglar’s screams of pain.

  Pam kicked her legs and scrambled along the porch towards her house. She had to leap over the kicking man to make it through her doorway into the house and she slammed the door against the terrors of the night. The officer slid down with her back pressed firmly against the back of the door and held her head in her hands.

  The assailant’s feet continued to beat a steady staccato against the cheap builders-grade metal door until they finally stopped after several minutes. Pam stood and peered through the peephole again. She followed a blood trail down the steps and around the corner, but she never saw what animal had attacked him and saved her life.

  Thank goodness for those crazy Vegas animals!

  SEVEN

  Reagan sat at her computer and watched the club footage over and over in an effort to figure out what she’d missed that caused the crowd to become violent so quickly. There wasn’t a clearly-defined shift in the music; it just maintained a steady beat and that one little incident when she bumped into the musclebound jerk seemed to spark the disaster. She even ran the audio through an analyzer with no results. Maybe it wasn’t the music after all.

  It had been three weeks since the incident at the Razor’s Edge and about a week and a half since the police had last questioned her. Erin Weston, her dad’s lawyer, had successfully campaigned for the department to leave her alone unless they were going to charge her with a crime. They’d even released her concert footage back to her, but she was forbidden to post anything beyond the twenty-four minute mark when she began moving into the crowd.

  The footage went viral almost immediately and Reagan’s webpage viewership skyrocketed. She could no longer keep up with reading all the comments on her various videos, let alone find the time to respond to them. It was nice to know that her name was out there, but she wanted to be known for her journalism, not for being the last person to see several hundred partiers alive.