“I can’t put this branch down, man, or it’ll crush her now that she’s in a different spot,” Luke tells me. He’s amazingly calm, given he’s holding up what has to be a couple of hundred pounds worth of wood and his girlfriend is about to burn alive. If she’s still alive.
It hits me suddenly. Josi might be dead. This is her body in my arms. I drop her just in time to lean over and vomit onto the ground. The violence all around makes me tremble in fear and shock—I can’t get any air, and my stomach is heaving so painfully my head’s spinning.
“Come on, Anthony,” Luke’s deep voice floats down to me. “It’s okay. We’re going to do this. Just come around behind me and grab the pocketknife off my belt, okay? You can do this. Just take the knife and then we’ll go from there.”
I stumble around to the other side of the car and reach up to Luke’s belt. My hands tremble so much I can’t get the clasp off.
“Easy,” Luke breathes to me, and his voice is so amazingly gentle that I feel myself calm right down. My hand steadies and I get the knife unhooked.
“Good man. Now go around and cut the seatbelt. Don’t think about anything else.”
I focus on the task, not the situation, and do as I’m told. It takes a while to saw the small knife through the thick seatbelt, but once I’ve done it, Josi slumps back onto my chest.
“Support her head!” Luke says quickly, and with the words my own medical training kicks in. I slowly slide her backwards out of the car, careful with her neck, looking for any superficial wounds or the type of bruising that indicates internal bleeding. Her ankle is badly swollen and she has an array of cuts over her face, plus a long gash along her hairline, but apart from that I can’t see anything else. She needs a hospital, badly. She could have brain trauma or spinal trauma. I hear Luke dropping the massive branch heavily back onto the car—it caves in a new section of the bonnet and as it connects the whole thing lights up in flames. I gasp, looking for Luke, but I can’t see him behind the wall of fire.
I don’t know what to do. Josi is heavy on top of me, pinning me to the ground, and I don’t want to move her too much in case it jerks her head, but I can’t stay where I am either, because if the car blows up then we’re both dead. I look for Luke again, but my eyes move instead to the flames. I was right—they are amazing. There’s more color inside them than I ever imagined. I’ve never seen fire before—not in real life. It’s always on television, but it never looks like this, dancing eerily across my vision. How could anyone call it dangerous?
“Anthony!” Luke shouts, appearing in front of my face. I jerk in fright. Luke leans down and lifts Josephine into his arms, making it look easy and simple and I’m reminded of how much stronger than me he is. I wonder how he got to be so strong, and this makes me wonder what his job entails, and this—
“Come on!” he yells. “Move it, Doc, or you’ll fry!”
I launch to my feet and run after him just as the car explodes. A wall of heat pummels into my back, throwing me off my feet, and the noise is like something’s burst inside my head. It takes me a moment to blink off the shock and crawl to where the stolen four-wheel drive is parked. Luke has Josi behind it, shielding her from the debris of the explosion, and when he sees me appear he sighs.
“I thought you were dead for a minute there, man.”
“Not dead,” I say, dazed.
“But not very alive, either,” he mutters. “Get in the car, quick.”
Luke settles Josephine in the back seat, placing his jacket under her head and strapping her in carefully. He drives for about ten minutes before he pulls the car back onto the side of the road.
“Anthony,” he says calmly, “How are you feeling?”
I stare at him.
“Do you feel … anything too strongly?”
Anything too strongly? I don’t understand what he’s asking me.
Luke swallows. “I can’t drive, man. I … I’m … My hands won’t stop shaking.”
“I can drive,” I tell him quickly. “I’m fine, Luke. I can drive.”
I go around to the driver’s seat, and Luke climbs into the back with Josephine, sliding her head onto his lap, and even though I’m concentrating on the road because there is precious cargo in this car—I can’t help but look into the back seat every few minutes. And so I see what I missed yesterday. When he came into my office I hated him for his arrogance and the way he has hurt her. I hated him for his contempt, but now I see that he has none. Now I see what he has done, not to her, but for her. I see the look in his eyes, and the way that he touches her, and I understand what it was that was missing from my own marriage. I wonder if there is anyone in this entire world for whom I would give up my life like he has done for Josephine Luquet.
And then Luke Townsend looks up at me, and he says, “It’s going to be all right, Doc. I promise I’ll make it all right. For you and for Josephine.” Even though I’m the prick who didn’t do his job, who didn’t believe her. He says it as though he really cares about me, as though it’s his responsibility to fix the mess I’ve created for myself, and even though it’s pretty damn obvious I’m in love with his girlfriend.
I even like that he called me Doc.
Looking into the back seat, I understand something. These two people are real and they are alive. But I am just a drone, who laughs when he sees a woman dying.
Luke
When I lifted my foot the earth was still. In the space of a step it has started to shake and I’ve lost my balance. She’s lying in my arms and she looks like she’s asleep, except that there’s blood on her face and bruises all over her skin, and the sight of it hurts me more than anything. As I watch her face from above, there are tears on her skin, and too late I understand that they are not hers, because she never cries.
*
Part of my brain is screaming and screaming and wanting to tear something down, but the other part is hyper aware of everything that’s going on. I know that we have been driving for twenty-three minutes when we pull back into the motel, because I have counted every single second. I know that Anthony is doing well, because he’s managed to hold it together for the whole drive, despite his mental meltdown at the crash site. I have called Ben and told him to be ready no matter what, and there he stands on the side of the road, arms full of equipment, when we pull over to pick him up.
The old scientist climbs into the front seat and turns around to gaze at Josi. “Is she …?”
“She’s not dead,” I reply calmly. Always calm. I am constantly surprised at my own ability to remain calm, even when I feel like lighting a fire that could destroy the whole damn world.
“Car accident,” Anthony says. “Where are we going, Luke? Hospital?”
“We’re going back to the asylum.”
“What? Why?”
“Because there’s an emergency aid station there, and it’s the only one close enough.”
“What about the Bloods?”
“They’re chasing us away from there—it’ll take them a while to realise we’ve gone back.”
“Yeah, but …”
“Does the station have everything you’d need to treat Josi?”
“I don’t know how badly she’s hurt, Luke, I—”
“Her body will be repairing itself at the moment, so any damage done is less harmful than it would be for anyone else,” Ben says.
“But …” Anthony tries.
“We need a place that can be sealed down, with no access from the outside, to give Ben a bit more time to finish his cure for the cure,” I say in a measured tone. I am patient and relaxed and I am not going to snap at any moment. I’m gripping the seat very tightly, and I am not going to snap.
“There’s heavy security at the facility,” Anthony warns.
“That’s why the three of us are going to be armed,” I reply.
“With what?”
I reach over to the backpack I stashed in the four-wheel drive this morning. Inside are two six-inch knives, a tear gas gren
ade and four guns. Two of the guns go straight into my shoulder holster, sitting snugly against my ribs. I slide the knives into my boots and pass the other two guns to the men in the front. They stare in disbelief at the weapons.
“What the hell is this?” Anthony asks.
“It’s a semi-automatic weapon and you’re going to use it to defend yourself.”
“I don’t know how!” he protests in a voice several octaves higher than usual.
“Aim and pull the trigger,” I snap. One glance at his face tells me he’s starting to panic, so I talk to him in a warm tone, knowing it will help relax him, regardless of what I’m saying. “A semi-automatic weapon doesn’t need to be manually chambered for each round, but you have to pull the trigger every time you want to fire—fully automatic is when you just hold your finger down and go nuts, and a weapon like a rifle needs a round loaded every time you fire a shot. Pulling the trigger in this causes the hammer and firing pin to strike and fire the cartridge. A bolt then recoils to extract and load a new cartridge from the magazine, making it ready to fire again. Each magazine for these guns contains ten rounds, so once you’ve used them all you have to change the magazine by pushing this in …” as I speak, I press the release button and catch the clip as it falls out. “Then you take the new one and you jam it up in there, nice and hard until you hear it click. Keep the safety on until you need to shoot it. And when you fire bring it up to your eye level and hold it with both hands. Take a deep breath before you pull the trigger ’cause it’ll help your aim. It’s a small enough weapon that it won’t kick, so you should be right just by holding it firm.”
I probably should have waited until he’d pulled over, because Anthony is perilously close to hitting another car, so intent on the gun is he. I remember perfectly the first time I held the cool steel in my hands and felt the weight of a weapon like this one. There’s something seductive and addictive about it, and I’ve seen a lot of men and women overcome by the illusion of power in a gun. There’s nothing glamorous about something that can kill with the flick of a finger though. To be honest I think it’s lazy.
“What kind is this?” Anthony asks, glancing at the gun sitting on his lap.
“That’s a Smith & Wesson police pistol—an old one. But don’t worry, I keep it nice and clean so it won’t blow your head off. Benny boy, you’ve got a Beretta 3032 Tomcat.”
“What about you?”
“I’m a Glock man. This is an Austrian nine-millimeter semi-compact model, and the other one’s a basic 17.” I holster the two guns again and hand out the extra magazines. Slumping back in my seat, I look down at Josi again, smoothing her dark hair off her forehead. Her eyelids are flickering as if she’s having a dream. The odds of it being a good one are slim, but I hope so for her sake anyway. She smells like she always does, and it hits me with a powerful wave of melancholy. I feel perverse and sleazy as I lean down to kiss her gently on the lips. It might be the last time I ever get to do it, even if by some miracle we all survive this day.
*
Anthony pulls into the hospital, which is now oddly quiet. “You two carry Josi between you and I’ll cover you,” I order. They help me get her out of the car.
“The back entrance will be quieter,” Anthony says, so we follow him around to a deserted loading bay. He puts his fingers to the scanner to open the bay. “My prints have been blocked,” he sighs.
I was expecting as much. My prints would undoubtedly get us in, but there’s only one reason they’ve been left activated since my operative status was changed to ‘rogue’, and that’s so I can be tracked. Cars and smaller scanners aren’t connected into the Blood hub, but a facility like this may be. When I dropped Josi here last year I was sure it was one of the last non-government facilities in the country, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely safe.
“What’s your alarm system like here?”
“I don’t know, it’s never gone off,” Anthony replies.
I remove my gun from its holster. Instead of aiming it at the lock on the door—a bullet will just ricochet straight off and probably land in my face—I move to the large steel roller door and shoot through the chain at the top of it. Now there’s nothing to hold the pressure of the spring-loaded roller system down except the small metal locking device at the bottom. Grabbing one of the knives from my boot, I lie down on the ground to get a good enough angle, and then I set about jimmying the tiny screws loose. Once they’re out, it’s simple enough to remove the locking device and the door springs up to the roof with a loud screech of rusty metal. Clearly, this is not a facility that has much money.
“Wow,” Anthony says. He’s obviously not seen much in his life if something as simple as opening a door impresses him. Poor guy.
“The noise will have notified everyone in the whole damn place, so we better hurry.”
Ben’s having trouble supporting Josi, so I take her weight from him and give the old guy a quick pat on the back. “Thanks, man. I’ve got her now. Just stay behind me.”
Anthony directs us through the asylum. I don’t bother to inform him that I’ve studied a floor plan, and could probably make my way around quicker than he could. Instead I keep my eyes peeled on every doorway and every corner, waiting for the first glimpse that it’s all about to fall apart. It will come, sooner or later. Someone will see us and sound an alarm, and then it won’t be long before the Bloods are here. We just have to secure ourselves somewhere before that happens.
A young male nurse rounds a corner in front of us and stops dead. He clocks Anthony holding the prostrate form of Josi. I’m about two seconds away from knocking him out when he says, “Doctor Harwood?”
“Jamie,” Anthony says quickly. “Good boy. I have a patient who collapsed outside. Could you run and get a gurney for her?”
Jamie nods, about to dash off when he spots the gun in my hand. He stops, mouth falling open. “What’s that? I mean, why—”
I sigh. “Take her weight,” I order Anthony, then I step forward and knock Jamie’s head against the wall. It’s barely more than a light tap, but it’s in the right spot, so he dozes off pretty quick.
“Luke!” Anthony protests.
“I know,” I agree. “A gurney would have been great.”
Another few feet along the hallway three men in lab coats emerge from a room. They spot us.
“What the—Anthony, why are you …?”
“Call security,” one of them orders coldly. “Harwood’s under Blood watch.”
Shit. I was hoping they’d yet to work out Anthony’s involvement. “Run,” I say crisply. As Ben hobbles past with his satchel and poor Anthony hauls Josi on his own, I take a few moments to bundle the three doctors back into the room they’d come from, locking it behind them. Their protests are dull and not particularly forceful—they just toddle into the room and start talking about a golf game. Damn drones.
Security starts streaming toward us, guns raised.
There’s a secret few people know: certain security guards and police officers are given a slightly altered version of the cure. It allows them to act without quite as many of the irrational mood swings and sharpens their brains to react with more savagery. It’s not anger—it’s a survival instinct, the same part of the brain that we Bloods are trained to switch on and off whenever we need to. The amygdala gives only a fight response, with no option for flight.
All of this has never really concerned me much before—I couldn’t give a shit who has what weird alterations in their heads. But right now I understand the danger: these men will keep fighting me until they die, not because they care, but because their nut-job brains are flooding them with bravado. I suppose it must be a bit like being on cocaine.
“Left!” I tell Ben and Anthony and they veer down a corridor away from the security guards. It won’t take long before the guards have flooded every hallway in this place. I pause at the corner and fire a few quick shots into the fray. I aim only for legs, shoulders and arms, taking down a couple of guard
s and deterring the rest for a few minutes.
Ben’s having trouble breathing so I take his bag from him. The absurdity of doing this with an old asthmatic and a terrified, scrawny shrink instead of my usual team almost makes me laugh.
“Keep going, old man,” I tell Ben gently. “You can do it.”
“I’m not old, you little shit,” he mutters, picking up the pace. I grin.
“You okay, Doc?”
Anthony nods, his face bright red. His footsteps grow more and more dogged with every breath. If I carry Josi I won’t be able to shoot at the same time, so he’s gonna have to tough it out.
“It’s not much further,” I reassure them, firing behind us a few times to deter the guards from sneaking around the corner.
We make it through a few more hallways and find ourselves faced with a flight of stairs.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Anthony gasps. “There’s an elevator right there!”
“An elevator’s too dangerous. They can just wait at the other end for us. I’ll take her for the climb, but get your gun out and concentrate.”
Anthony’s legs are jelly when he passes Josi over to me. He looks like a newborn foal as he tries to climb the stairs, trembling gun waving wildly. Jesus, he’s going to wind up shooting one of us by mistake.
Josephine is over my shoulder—unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of looking after her head anymore—if she has a neck injury, then we’re screwed and there’s nothing I can do about it. With my other arm I support Ben up the stairs—I have a real fear that he’s about to have a heart attack and drop dead.
The door to the stairwell opens a few floors below us and suddenly there are two guards racing up. “Doc, shoot them!” I order.
Anthony whimpers, but shoves the gun over the railing and starts firing erratically. There’s no chance of him hitting them, but it at least gets them to dive out of the way. We move faster until the door just above us opens and two more men appear. I let go of Ben, draw my left gun and shoot the first man in the chest. He falls straight down on top of Anthony, who crumples under his weight. Swearing under my breath, I lower Josi to the ground, placing her awkwardly on the stairs, and then I launch myself up to where the second man is trying to whack the Doc with his baton.
Fury: Book One of the Cure (Omnibus Edition) Page 25