Juno shook her head and smiled. “You never belonged in this business, Max. That was only half the equation.”
“And the other was bringing back the virus.”
She nodded. “You’re not as thick as I thought. Did you arm the bomb?”
This time Max grinned. “Yeah. This place will be vaporized in a matter of minutes. I succeeded, Juno. You failed. How does it feel?”
Shit! She grappled with panicked thoughts for an instant before regaining mental control. He could be bluffing. Just kill him and get out! “Back down the hallway, slowly.” Juno backed into the alcove and kept her sight on Max as he stepped away from the elevator and complied.
With astounding agility for a man his size, Max lunged for her as he passed by. Her two shots flew over his head as he drove his shoulder low and hard into her gut and slammed her against the door.
His tackle knocked the wind from her lungs and the rifle from her fingers, yet Juno remained unfazed. Fighting instincts honed during ten years of Kumdo training kicked in. She reached down for Max’s face, but he backed off before she could dig her thumbnail in and scoop out an eyeball. The brief reprieve allowed her time to arm—fighting knife in her left hand, katana in the right. She fell upon Max with her blades, as quickly as any zombie would attack.
Max danced back and avoided her opening gambit: a diversionary knife slash directed at his throat. Her main attack came low—the katana sliced through Max’s combat trousers as if they were woven of cheesecloth, biting deep into the hard muscle beneath. The wound nearly folded his left leg beneath him as tried to backpedal away. She followed the slash with a textbook kick that caught him high in the chest and knocked him backward into the wall. Strong and tough as he was, Max proved no match for her agility, stamina, and superior hand-to-hand fighting skills. She kicked him in his thigh wound, and with triumphant satisfaction watched him crumple to the floor, finished.
“Biiiitch!” The roar came from her left, accompanied by running footsteps.
No. Zuckerberg had survived her encounter with the gorilla beast, though Juno could only wonder how. She knew this only by her voice—still somewhat similar to the old Trisha—for Zuckerberg had obviously been infected by the virus.
Max chuckled from his defeated position on the floor. “Well, this just got interesting.”
His naked throat and face beckoned for her killing blow but hesitation robbed her.
Ever a fast runner, Trisha covered the forty feet from the intersection at an insane pace. Only a few wispy strands of her gorgeous mane of golden hair remained, clinging desperately to a skull that had morphed into a crested, misshapen shell of hardened armor. Her skin had taken on the look of urban camouflage, mottled in sickly splotches of gray, white, and black. An elongated jaw with severely pointed chin combined with her drooping, crooked nose to form the blade of a hatchet face. The fingers on her left hand had grown to double length, and the skin had torn on several of them to reveal naked bone.
Snapping out of her shock, Juno raised her blades in defensive posture.
“Oh, you gonna cut me, Juno?” Trisha said as she slowed to a walk. She sounded raspy now, her voice deeper than it had been before the infection.
“Yes.”
“Better do it quick before I really go apeshit.” She cackled, coughed violently once, and spat a gob of blood on the floor. Without turning her black gaze from Juno, she said, “Hey, Max.”
“Zuckerberg. You don’t die easily, do you?”
“Nope. Still kickin’, despite the best efforts of the Supreme Leader and this bitch.”
“You two have business to take care of. Don’t let me get in your way.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t make me kill you, Trisha.”
She laughed hysterically. “You already tried. Sorry, no do-overs.”
In a flash she lunged for Juno, who countered with a katana slash that deflected off her armored head. The air again left Juno’s lungs in a gust as Trisha plowed into her belly, pointed head first. Her katana flew off into parts unknown when her former ally drove her to the floor and fell upon her, teeth snapping in her face. Her breath stank of rotting meat.
Juno tried to slash with her combat knife, only to discover that Trisha had her left wrist pinned to the floor. She squirmed beneath her in revulsion as Trisha gnashed her teeth and attempted to bite her shoulder.
“Meet your fate, bitch!” Trisha growled.
Juno jerked her head to the side just before Trisha’s long jaw snapped shut on empty air an inch from her cheek. No way could Juno fight her off; she understood that now. None of us will leave this place—not as human beings, anyway.
Trisha shot bolt upright with a sudden spasmodic jerk and roared in agony as several of her teeth grew to greater lengths before Juno’s eyes. Finding her left wrist suddenly free, Juno sunk her knife through Trisha’s ribs and into her heart.
Trisha’s roar ceased, replaced by a gurgling sound as she sucked air into the chest wound. Juno pulled the knife out, sat up, and buried it in Trisha’s left eye. Her corrupted life force drained in a heartbeat as she flopped onto her back, dead as a stone.
Juno collapsed onto her back as well from sheer exhaustion. And relief that she had not been bitten and infected. Then she saw Max towering over her, his rifle pointed at her face, and knew she was dead anyway.
* * *
“You had a good run, Juno. CIA all the way.”
“Get it over with, Max. I don’t need your lecture.” The bitch actually sneered at him.
“Yeah, but I need my password. Give it to me and I might let you live.”
“I have a better idea. You’ve accomplished your objective. Help me realize mine, and I’ll use all of my connections to locate the men who killed your family. We’ll hunt them down together. You have to admit we make a great team, in and out of the bedroom.”
Max shook his head. “Sorry, but I’m through making deals with dissembling demons.”
“Look, I did what I had to do. The interests of national security—”
“Enough.” Max had grown thoroughly tired of betrayal being justified in the interests of national security. “I let you walk out of here under one condition: destroy the virus samples.”
“You know I won’t do that.”
“I’m not giving you a choice. Give me the samples and live to resign from the agency when you get home. Trust me, it’s a road to nowhere, I’ve traveled every mile of it.”
She laughed lightly, dismissively. “You never arrived because you can’t play the game.” She started to rise, came to her knees.
“That’s far enough.”
“You won’t shoot me, Max, for all of the reasons you’ve just stated.” She stood to her full height before him.
“You’re wrong.” Max pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. No time to ponder the cause of malfunction. Hundredths of seconds dragged on like minutes. In slow motion he threw down his rifle and reached for his Glock. He watched as Juno drew her own pistol from her belt with practiced speed. The explosive bullet Juno fired center mass into his plate carrier shattered the ceramic plate inside, and the remaining concussion punched into his ribs and knocked him backward into the closed elevator doors. Again, no time for pain or to survey the damage.
Gagging, without a single molecule of air left in his lungs, Max raised his pistol and instinctively aimed and shot Juno in the forehead.
Over.
Her helmet went bouncing down the hall when the back of her head blew out in a shower of brain matter and blood. Yet she still looked exquisitely beautiful as she stared up empty-eyed at Max, a porcelain doll with a single bullet hole marring her perfect features.
Max dropped to his knees, gagged some more, and then vomited, nearly crying out from the exquisite pain in the ribs on his right side. The explosive bullet had pr
actically sundered his plate carrier but hadn’t penetrated through. Nevertheless, he figured the shot might have cracked a couple of ribs. Time would tell if the wound was superficial.
Max knew his leg wound was deep without even looking at it. You gotta bandage that. But a glance at his watch told him he hadn’t the time.
He hadn’t expected to feel elation after killing Juno, but he likewise hadn’t counted on a deluge of regret. As he looked on her corpse, an avalanche of guilt and self-loathing covered and smothered him. Another team you led to hell. And he would never forget them—they would all visit him in his dreams. Even Juno Rey. That’s on her. I gave her an out and she refused.
Max snapped out of his daze and collected himself. He holstered his pistol, picked up his rifle and cleared the jam, then took a step toward the elevator.
The samples. He knelt next to Juno and flipped her over, taking care not to look at the yawning hole in her skull. First he went through her butt pack yet found only miscellaneous items packed for the mission—spare batteries for her NVGs, a couple of energy bars, a small first-aid kit, some chemlights. Maybe this. With his thumbnail he popped open a round plastic case the size of a silver dollar that held a few white crystals of methamphetamine. The soldier’s best friend. The Nazis had thought so anyway, and the US ran with the idea in the aftermath of World War II. Max had never used the shit—he didn’t like the idea of relying on drugs to keep him alert and combat ready—but he’d known plenty of operatives who did.
He checked her cargo pockets. Bingo. He came up with two flash drives, and his fingers brushed off something square and steel. He pulled out all three items. The drives he immediately smashed beneath his boot heel. Within the metal box he found five small panes of glass supported upright in a rack. He wondered momentarily what they might be, and after examining one realized they were microscope slides painted with a dried organic culture. With great haste he dumped them on the floor and likewise smashed them to bits. Cracked plastic and shattered glass littered the floor next to Juno’s body. Appropriate enough.
0423. Eight minutes. Max pressed the UP button, and the elevator doors immediately opened. He stepped inside and didn’t look back.
21
Inside the elevator, Max fished out an Israeli bandage from one of his cargo pockets and cinched it down over his injured leg. A bell sounded; the elevator doors opened on the main lab level. Max looked both ways down the long, tenebrous hallway into the scattered pools of light and saw no one. He turned left and sprinted—or what passed for a sprint on his injured leg—for the elevator at the far end that would return him to the surface. You’d better hope so anyway. It was the only elevator up, and the puppet masters who had fiddled with the power could likely deactivate it if necessary. When would it be more necessary than right now? He didn’t wish to ponder his own rhetorical question.
Max reached the elevator within a few seconds and pushed the button. The UP arrow did not illuminate. No noise from behind the doors or discernible vibration from a descending car.
“Shit!” He smashed a fist into the doors several times.
According to his watch he had roughly six-and-a-half minutes to live. He battered the door once more for good measure, then said to no one, “Might as well get it over with right now.” The lower complex might well collapse during the nuclear blast and trap him under rubble until he died of radiation sickness. Or perhaps he would get lucky and simply be vaporized. It was hard to say what fate the bomb might deal him, but death by explosive bullet to the head would be instantaneous.
End of the road. Max drew his Glock, the best option remaining to him, and hoped there might be a Valhalla, as Red had believed. Maybe they would all be there: his last team and the men he’d lost before them, going all the way back to his time in Marine Corps special ops. Max would bring a few fellow warriors from his final mission, and they would all feast and drink and remember the times they’d cheated death until they could escape it no longer.
Down the hallway, the doors on the elevator up from logistics opened. A vague shadow man exited the car and turned right, moving away from him. A North Korean soldier for certain, yet he looked familiar even from a distance. The sergeant? He couldn’t be sure, and the man’s presence wasn’t about to alter his fate in any case. That had been a one-time deal. If they met again, his devotion to duty and authority would likely trump any sentiments that he still owed Max for saving his life.
Eh, fuck it. “Hey!” Max called to the soldier, who stopped, turned, and regarded him a moment before quickly entering a pass code and ducking into a doorway. “God dammit.”
Max took off after him. Perhaps he knew of another way to the surface that they might have missed, though Max had his doubts. We made a thorough sweep, but we weren’t looking for hidden doors. Then he remembered the briefing and Yoon’s belief that there might be a secret stair or elevator up from the main lab. And if there is, he might be taking it.
He ran past the elevator and kept going. The soldier had entered a doorway on the right-hand wall. Shit, which one? As he passed the small theater they had searched earlier, a dark, gleaming spot on the white floor caught his eye. Max bent and examined it, not surprised when his finger came up bloody. He unclipped the flashlight from his plate carrier and scanned the floor, spotting a few smaller drops leading back to the elevator that he hadn’t noticed. Ahead he spied a couple more and followed.
The blood trail ended before a door, and a tiny red smear was evident when Max shined his light on the door handle. He opened the door and recognized the guard post, still deserted. Two drops of blood led him to the empty weapons rack, a floor-to-ceiling affair that had housed rifles on the bottom rack and pistols on top. The rack stood slightly askew from the wall. Max grabbed hold of the side furthest from the wall and pulled; the heavy steel rack swung outwards on hinges well-oiled and concealed. Doubtless there was a hidden lever or button that released the catch on the secret door.
I wouldn’t have found it in time. Had the soldier panicked and mistakenly left the door open? Max doubted that. The sergeant likely left it open to assist other fleeing soldiers, as the lower ranks probably did not know of its existence.
Max closed the door behind him until he heard its lock click shut. He stood at the foot of a steel stairway that wound upward in a well-lit concrete stairwell. No sense cutting the power here, he thought as he started jogging up the stairs. Juno had slashed him across the quadriceps, and every straightening of his left leg brought on burning agony. Faster! Keep moving!
In an attempt to ignore the pain, he tried to focus on other matters, such as the ramifications of the nuclear blast. Would the entire complex collapse? Good chance of it. He wasn’t sure how powerful the bomb was, but he knew that underground nuclear tests conducted by the government in the Nevada desert had left many deep craters behind, and those bombs had likewise exploded hundreds of feet below the surface. This whole place will be a memory, and you with it if you don’t move your ass.
As if the bomb wasn’t worry enough, Max heard a loud crash from below and knew a zombie had ripped the weapons rack from the wall. It, or perhaps they, had followed the soldier’s blood trail and his own, probably by scent alone. Max tried to move faster but could not. He could only gut it out and hope he reached the top first. And what then? They’ll rip off that door too.
From below came staccato and occasionally simultaneous barking—either two zombie dogs or the two-headed one he hadn’t finished off. Just beneath the barking he heard the clinking of long claws ringing on the steel risers at frenetic pace and knew the thing would run him down long before he reached the top. Max climbed and listened, and within a few seconds sighted the creature through a grated steel landing—the two-headed dog once again. He thought of tossing a grenade down the stairwell but reconsidered. The dog, wickedly fast and agile, might easily avoid the blast. He slung his rifle and reached for the shotgun; in this instance several pe
llets would be more effective than just one bullet, explosive or not.
The dog reached the landing directly below him, its double barks growing more frantic when it spotted him above. It doubled its speed, taking the steps three at a time. Max leaned over the railing and tried to lead the dog with his shotgun, but it was ridiculously fast. His first shot, aimed at the larger head, missed. Pellets peppered the dog’s back, but it appeared not to feel them.
The dog had turned on the final landing and was hurtling straight for Max by the time he could aim a second shot. He pulled the trigger at point-blank range—the dog’s larger head with its snapping jaws exploded into shredded gore. The impact of the shotgun blast arrested the dog in midair and sent its body flopping end-over-end back down to the landing, where it writhed for a moment before starting to regain its feet.
Shouting in broken, slurred Korean echoed up the stairwell from three landings below, where a human zombie climbed the steps in a gait thrown out of rhythm by its one spade-claw foot.
The dog was already back on its feet and ready to charge when Max looked up, its small head barking sworn revenge. Thoroughly tired of the creature and ever mindful that he should be escaping and not fighting, Max aimed at its remaining head and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened, and he realized his shotgun had jammed after his last shot. With no time to clear the jam, he swung the butt and tagged the dog on the bloody stump of its neck. It howled in anguish as its body flopped back down the stairs, yet it was far from defeated. It hit the lower landing and rolled, then came right back at him at even greater speed. Max worked the action on the shotgun, but the jam did not clear.
The dog leaped over the last four steps and attacked. Its jaws, lined with rows of short, needle-sharp teeth, snapped together mere inches from his face. Max parried with the shotgun, shoved the beast away, and then dropped the now-useless weapon. It immediately came at him again, only this time he was prepared. With his left hand he seized the dog by the throat below its smaller head—he then jammed his right thumb into one of its black eyes and pressed inward. The satisfaction of feeling its eyeball pop like a grape impelled him to dig further. Soon he felt other things giving way beneath his probing thumbnail, and finally the dog went limp.
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