THE ARK

Day 939

Derek Kline bit into the spicy shrimp and winced inwardly. The pain in his left rear molar was intense. It had been increasing for the last three days, but his never-ending fear of dentists had kept him from making an appointment until this morning. Now it would not be until Monday before he could get in to be seen. That meant that there would be another three days of this pain before there would be any relief. The dentist’s office acted sympathetic but not enough to find a way to squeeze him in today. They best they could offer was to suggest taking Motrin to help with the pain. So far, their suggestion had helped but not anywhere near enough.

Derek looked across the table at his friend Robert Walsh. Robert was hungrily eating and it made him a little envious to see his lifelong friend eating easily while he suffered with each bite.

Derek and Rob had met in kindergarten and had been close friends ever since. They had played together as children and been on the same sports teams in school.

When they were ten years old, Derek’s Grandfather had bought him his first telescope and after that, they both developed a love of astronomy. They spent many summer nights studying the heavens and charting stars. They would often quiz each other about the constellations and individual stars that made them up.

They had pooled their money and slowly built up a formidable astronomy library.

By this point, they boys were as close as any brothers were. Where one was, the other was almost always guaranteed to be found.

Derek and Rob even went on their first date together. In tenth grade, they took the Miller twins to the school dance and later spent half the night trying to get the girls to show an interest in astronomy. The date ended when Tara Miller asked why anyone would care so much about a bunch of dumb stars and her sister Lisa agreed.

This friendship continued right along through school and eventually led them the All-You-Can-Eat buffet at the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant where they were currently sitting.

Since they each worked only part-time on the campus of the University of Washington, they tended to be a little short of cash most of the time. It was not uncommon for them to eat only one real meal a day and make it a big one at some buffet where they could eat enough to sustain them for twenty-four hours. Doing this made it possible for them to get by on as little as ten dollars a day for food. This practice allowed them to put away more of their meager funds for astronomy journals or texts.

The two aspiring astronomers had been on a kind of high for the last several months since discovering the strange properties of a comet that was coming towards the Earth. They had worked with their professor to confirm all their data and checked to see that there was no other record of this comet’s irregularities in any of the typical sources.

They had wanted to publicize their findings but their professor had insisted on discretion. Apparently, he knew of an astronomy program on the East Coast. They had what they thought was a big finding involving an asteroid several years before. After going public and creating a minor panic it turned out that there was a calculation with an unnoticed error in it that radically changed the big find into a big nothing. The event had caused a significant amount of embarrassment for the school and their astronomy program.

It was this negative publicity that Professor Mallox was determined to prevent.

The boys reluctantly went along with the decision but after almost six months they were getting tired of waiting. One of the few arguments that they had ever had, occurred one week ago. Rob suggested that they stop waiting and publicize their findings on their own.

Derek was adamantly opposed to this and the boys had been close to having a screaming match, in the end, they agreed to give Professor Mallox two more weeks to come up with some news.

Today it took Derek much longer than normal to eat his fill, much of the time Rob was gently harassing him about his tooth and how slow he ate, but before they left Derek had done a good bit of damage to the buffets supply of Szechwan shrimp and several other items.

The two friends left the restaurant feeling stuffed and walked the ten minutes back to their apartment. They were both in a little bit of a hurry, Rob had a date that evening with Sara, a journalism student, and Derek wanted to get another six hundred milligrams of Motrin for the pain in his tooth.

The boys jogged up the two flights of stairs that led to their apartment, Derek retrieved the keys from his pocket and opened the door.

As Rob stepped into the room, he was aware of a strange odor. It was not strong and reminded him of old Mr. Cardinal who lived across the street from him when he was a kid. It was slightly citric smelling Cologne.

“You smell that?” Derek asked.

“Yeah, some kinda perfume or something.”

“I think someone has been in here. Did you give Sara a key?”

“No, I didn’t,” Rob denied as he reached back and locked the door.

Slowly the boys searched the place and found that there was no one there. They were finishing their quick search when Rob saw an unfamiliar white strap sticking out from under his bed.

He grabbed the strap and slowly pulled out a navy blue gym bag. It was less than half full but rather heavy.

He carried the bag to the living room. “Is this yours?” he asked Derek who was looking at the bag in a curious way.

“Never saw it, where did it come from?”

“I just found it under my bed, and I’ve never seen it before either. It looks new.”

“Let’s see what’s in it,” Derek asked.

Rob slowly opened the bag and dumped the contents out on the couch.

“Oh no!” Rob exclaimed when he saw the two handguns and the five six inch by eight inch packages of white powder fall out from the bag. Then he noticed the large stacks of twenty and fifty dollar bills that had also fallen out.

“I think we have a big problem,” said Derek as he began inspecting their find.

“We have to call the cops,” Rob stated with a quivering voice.

“What cop is going to believe that we just happened to find this in the apartment that we’ve lived in for the last two and a half years?”

“Then let’s get rid of it, go throw it in a lake or dumpster!” Rob said as his panic began.

Derek tried to be calm, “Slow down and think, If whoever put it here comes looking for it, I don’t want to have to explain, to those kind of people, why we just threw it away.”

“Then what do we do, just put it back under the bed?” Rob half yelled.

“No, let’s start by getting it out of here. We’ll hide it for a few days and then if we’ve heard nothing and when we’re a little calmer we’ll get rid of it.”

“Where do you want to hide it?”

“There is that abandoned warehouse on the other side of campus, the one where there was that fire last fall, I’m sure we can find a place there that will be good for a few days,” Derek suggested.

Rob was glad to have a plan and willingly agreed. The two of them worked to quickly place everything back in the bag.

As they were moving towards the door, they heard the sound of feet coming up the wooden staircase. Rob looked at his watch thinking that it might be Sara. Then he became pale as he realized that there were more than just a few people out there, and it sounded like they had heavy boots on.

The boys started backing away from the door and went to the fire escape in the living room. They had used the fire escape occasionally as an exit and were quickly opening the large window that led to the metal stairs.

Just as they were stepping out, they heard someone pounding on the apartment door, and a voice call out. “Open the door, this is the Police. We have a search warrant.”

They were halfway down the fire escape when they heard the sound of their apartment door being smashed in.

They jumped the last few feet and were up and running, Derek was in the lead carrying the gym bag. They turned down an alley that dead-ended into their building and could already hear the sounds of people following them down the fire escape.

As they ran they were looking frantically for a place to hide the bag, but there were few options.

Out of desperation Derek finally threw the bag through a broken basement window of an old building, as soon as he had done this he quickly checked to be sure that he had not been seen and raced to catch up to Rob.

They ran another two blocks and heard the approaching sirens. It sounded like they were coming from at least two different directions. He pointed down the next alley and yelled: “You go that way, meet me at the entrance to the park in twenty minutes.”

Derek knew that he had been seen as he ran from the fire escape; so as he turned onto a side street he tore off his gray hooded sweatshirt and stopped long enough to shove it down a storm drain. Half a block further up the street he saw a discarded baseball cap in the gutter, he quickly grabbed it and placed the filthy orange cap on his head.

He slowed to a walk as he got to the next intersection and moved out to the main street and merged with pedestrian traffic.

Derek found that walking at a slow pace was extremely difficult, he desperately wanted to run and it took all his willpower to control the urge. He was also fighting the desire to look behind him. He did not think that he had been spotted since getting rid of the sweatshirt and he knew he had to blend in with the others on the street.

He continued walking until he approached a Burger King, and he slipped inside. He ordered a Coke and took a seat away from the front doors but with a clear view of the entrance.

He sat still and waited, glancing at his watch every few minutes. During that time, he saw police officers walk past the restaurant twice. On one occasion one of the officers glanced in the window but her gaze did not lock onto him.

As he sat, he tried to figure out what had happened. Things were not making sense. Neither of them ever used drugs and no one had access to their apartment. Still, someone had placed the drugs, cash, and guns in their apartment. The Police had been at the apartment within minutes of them returning home, so it made sense that they had been waiting for them to return. So why did someone put the stuff in the apartment and how did the cops find out? Either the cops followed the person who put the stuff in the apartment or the person who placed the drugs in the apartment told the cops. If that was the case, then they were intentionally being set up.

The more Derek thought about this the more he kept coming back to the key question, why did someone do this? What reason was there to go through this kind of trouble? None of it made any sense.

After ten minutes, he rose and left the restaurant carrying his drink with him. He crossed the street and casually headed toward the park. The timing was good and if all went well he would meet Rob right on schedule. He began to consider the possibility that Rob might have been caught, but he pushed that thought from his mind. That idea was not something that he wanted to think about.

As he approached the park, he heard a loud male voice behind him call out. “Police! Stop right there!”

Derek did not even consider any options; he was instantly running as fast as he could. He approached the entrance to the park and dashed inside. Rob was nowhere to be seen.

On the path about thirty feet ahead of him was a small female police officer.

Derek never considered fighting her, but he knew he was fast and she was small, he assumed getting around her would be rather simple, he increased speed and ran straight at her, at the last minute, he would dart around her and she would never catch him.

He heard her command him to stop and reach toward her gun belt. He was about fifteen feet away when she raised up a strange looking object and stepped directly in his path.

All of the sudden everything changed, instantly he could not see, breathing was almost impossible and his whole neck and face felt like they were engulfed in fire.

The next thing Derek knew he was on the ground vomiting, there was warm Coca Cola coming from his nose and Szechwan shrimp coming from his mouth. The orange ball cap had come off and was under his cheek. He was still fighting for breath and seeing was almost impossible. He was frantically rubbing his eyes, but that seemed to intensify the pain.

Without warning, a hard object slammed into his back forcing him flat to the ground, next rather small hands were grabbing his wrists and pulling his arms behind his back. Resisting any further was impossible. He felt the cold steel on his wrists and heard the clicking as the handcuffs tightened.

The officer got off him and he felt mild relief as her knee was removed from his spine.

Derek could hear the female officer involved in a conversation with who he assumed was another police officer but he could not make out what they were saying.

After what seemed like a long time face down on the cold ground, there were hands on either side of him, roughly lifting him to his feet. His breathing was slightly improved and he could see a little better, the tears were still coming and his face and eyes still felt like they were covered in acid. He heard someone tell him he had the right to remain silent, but the rest of what they said was drowned out in his next bout of vomiting.

They assisted him to the park exit and he was held waiting for several minutes finally another police cruiser pulled up.

By the time he was pushed into the car the effects of the CS/OC pepper spray were wearing off enough for him to see the bloody and abraded face of Rob Walsh as he half landed on him. Rob’s face looked as if he fell hard against the pavement and there was a terrified look in his eyes.

As Derek got himself into a seated position he noticed through the Plexiglas shield that separated the front seat from the back, that there was a new looking navy blue gym bag with a white shoulder strap sitting on the front passenger seat.