The Regent

by Marcus Richardson

  Cooper took in the details of the sweaty face behind the riot gear, his wide-eyed expression, and the fact that his finger was on the outside of the trigger guard.

  Cooper narrowed his eyes.

  He struck with his right hand, grabbing the end of the rifle barrel, twisting savagely and pushing it to point over his shoulder instead of his face. If the man had been aiming at the center of his chest, it would’ve been harder for Cooper to avoid getting shot, but as it was, he only had to move it a couple of inches to be in the clear. But it didn’t matter because the cop—or whoever he was—didn’t have his finger on the trigger.

  That gave Cooper just enough time to extend his arm and shove the stock of the rifle back up into the cop’s face. This didn’t do any harm, because the man wore a riot mask, but the movement surprised him enough that he took his eyes off his target and threw his head back to avoid getting hit.

  Cooper then swung his left leg up and into the man’s crotch from below and behind, smashing his sensitive bits against the protective plate worn over the outside of his clothes on the front side of his body. The man went down in a screaming heap on top of Cooper, the weight of his armor painful against Cooper’s already bruised and battered body.

  He shrugged off the pain, though, because when he rose from the ground, he held the rifle. The surprised look on the faces of the two men closest to the senator was enough to know that he’d gained the upper hand. He was about to order them to lower their weapons when he saw the row of five officers standing behind the senator, all with rifles aimed at Cooper. They all had their fingers on the triggers.

  Angus suddenly appeared between everyone, his arms up and slowly turning in a circle to show he wasn’t armed. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Everyone, stop right now.”

  Muffled shouts erupted from the men in riot gear, all of them yelling for Angus to get out of the way and for Cooper to lower his weapon and for everyone to calm down. Cooper’s eyes took in the riflemen carefully. Only two of them looked like they were stable enough not to shoot everyone by accident. The others look just as nervous and sweaty as the man who’d confronted him initially. It wasn’t a good situation, but he noticed his was the most stable of all the rifles being swung around.

  “Senior inspector Angus Campbell, Scotland Yard!” Angus roared, silencing everyone. He held out his arm, holding a shiny badge, letting everyone get a good look. “Everyone, let’s just settle down for a moment, shall we?”

  “All well and good, sir, but I need you to step out of the way,” one of the men in the firing line said.

  “I’m not going anywhere!” snapped Angus. “These men are with me, and he’s a U.S. Senator,” he said, pointing to Denny, sitting on the floor next to Eli who looked ready to pass out.

  When Cooper saw two of the men in the firing line look at each other with uncertainty, he knew he had his opening. He snapped the rifle to point up, took one hand off it and then lowered the weapon to the ground. He stepped back and kept both hands in the air. “My name is Cooper Braaten, I’m with Senator Tecumseh’s security detail…”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Denny said, standing up and brushing off his wet clothes. “He’s with me.”

  “Can we all agree to just lower our weapons for one sodding second?” asked Angus.

  Outside, more and more bodies slammed against the heavy oak door.

  “I need shooters on the walls!” a radio crackled, somewhere in the crowded room.

  “You three, back to your posts,” said a gruff voice. One of the men on the firing line stepped forward and pointed out three men. They mumbled responses and turned to rattle off down the corridor, their gear jostling and bouncing with every step.

  The door shuddered again from the impact of somebody slamming into it from the other side. Cooper stared at the wooden door that had seen perhaps centuries of violence visited upon it.

  It must be a fucking mess out there.

  Several loud and sharp thunks chattered into the door.

  “They’re shooting at us now,” moaned one of the men in riot gear.

  Cooper locked eyes with the man who’d taken charge of the castle police force. “Can I lower my hands yet?”

  “Aye, but you lot have some explaining to do.”

  29

  Time Runs Out

  Danika held her breath and vaulted over the last barricade, crashing into the side of the building before she inhaled. She’d run clean through a small cloud of Jayne’s toxin as it swirled in the street. As one of Reginald’s top-tier operatives, she’d been inoculated against just about every nasty bug the Council used in its offensive arsenal. As a result, she was pretty confident that she could survive whatever it was Jayne had used against the local cops…after all, she’d only been out of the Council’s clutches for about six months; that was hardly enough time to develop and fabricate a completely new weapons system.

  Based on the reactions she’d seen from the police—vomiting, bleeding from the eyes and mouth, and that effervescent scent of flowers—she knew it was related to the virus Jayne used to take control of Barron.

  Her own naturally enhanced regenerative properties might or might not give her an advantage when it came to fighting something on that magnitude, but all the same, she didn’t want to take the chance of finding out.

  She flattened her back against the building, mind racing to remember where the closest door was. The view across the street was not pretty. The cop she’d been talking to—Tommy—had doubled over and vomited all over the ground. Several others had come to his aid, only to walk through a cloud of Jayne’s weapon.

  They were now writhing on the ground, screaming incoherently and clawing at their faces. Across the street, one poor bastard stood stock still, rooted to the spot in the doorway where he’d taken refuge from the rain. His mouth hung open and his lips trembled as he stood there staring at the scene before him, blood trickling from his ears.

  “Get inside! Get away from the gas!” Danika screamed, waving at him. The man’s eyes shifted toward her but he made no move. He looked back at his commanding officer, now huddled on the ground behind the police car.

  Danika glanced up the Royal Mile toward the castle. It was hopelessly lost in the gloom and the rain. She could barely see the edge of the police blockade, the last car just a blurry gray shape spouting blue-and-white lights. All around her, yellow jacketed police officers rushed to aid one another, only to be exposed to the chemical and falling to their knees. Some had already lost the fight and died, remaining still in the rain.

  It’s moving faster than anything I’ve seen before.

  Danika raced down the side of the building with its odd, gun-shaped window coverings, hoping the rain from the storm would push the chemicals away from her. She found an entrance, kicked it open and ran inside the empty public lobby. Across the expansive room she sprinted, leaping over a counter at the far side of the tall, cathedral-like room. Piles of emergency food stores and equipment ringed the outer circumference of the semicircular lobby. The police had been using this as their depot, stashing equipment and materiel in preparation for further actives.

  Not having a clue where she was going, Danika burst through door after door, surprising more than a few officers, and horrified to learn that Jayne’s weapon was already inside the building. She held her breath and threw open one door only to find three officers in the throes of their final moments, clawing at their throats and bleeding from every orifice.

  It’s like she aerosolized Ebola…

  Danika opened the room across the hall, still looking for the radio control center. Instead she found riot control gear. At last, among equipment she recognized, she threw open one dented hard case and found inside a stack of military-grade gas masks. She activated the filters, strapped it on her head, and cinched it tight, inhaling the sweet, slightly plastic smell of filtered air.

  Danika turned and peered through the limited field of vision of the gas mask down the hallway. Behind her, a door slammed ope
n. She spun, whipping out her pistol.

  A cop dressed in blue fatigues staggered into the hallway and smashed into the far wall. He turned to her, his face a bloody mess. “Help…”

  ”I’m sorry,” she called, her voice muffled by the mask. “There’s nothing I can do…”

  The man’s face, a mask of gore, shifted into a snarl of pure hatred. “Fucking bitch! Too good for me, are you?” He heaved himself off the wall and took a shaky step on legs not altogether steady. His hands curled into fists and his shoulders hunched as the infected officer took two more steps and leaned against the opposite wall. “Bloody teach you a lesson…”

  What the hell is this?

  “Sir, stop right there!” Danika yelled in her most commanding voice. The man laughed. He screamed something unrecognizable, then lurched back to his feet. She recognized the look in his face. He was going to charge her. He dipped forward ever so slightly then ran at her, fists pumping in the air, legs churning, eating up the distance in the hallway remarkably fast.

  Danika dropped her aim, squeezed the trigger twice and he fell in a heap as his legs stopped working. She took two cautious steps towards him, staying well back from his thrashing arms.

  Something crashed in the room across the hall behind a closed door. “Bastard!” a loud voice shouted.

  I don’t have time for this bullshit.

  Danika turned from the body and sprinted down to the end of the hallway where a wide set of double fire doors blocked her path. As she reached the doors, she kicked out in stride and hit the bumper bar, flinging open the right-hand door.

  It caught someone in the face with a wet smack and sent a man flying. She stepped into the radio control room in time to see another cop stand up from a gory mess on the floor. His hands and fists were speckled with blood, and a trickle of something nasty dribbled from the corner of his eyes.

  “I’ll kill you!” he roared, spitting drops of blood as he yelled.

  Another cop in the far corner, busy destroying the desk and some computer equipment, turned at her intrusion and screamed in defiance. Danika took two steps into the room and fired twice. Both cops fell screaming before the echo of her gunshots had dissipated. She spun around and pistol whipped the cop on the floor behind her—the one who’d been knocked down by the door—just to be safe.

  Shutting the door, she pulled the pin at the top and locked it. A quick scan of the computer consoles and equipment showed Danika that the men had been in the room trashing everything. She never heard of any weapon—biological or chemical—that would drive someone so completely insane that they would lash out at anyone or anything that caught their eye.

  Danika ignored the moaning and writhing the floor around her and grabbed the first unbroken radio, turning up the volume. Muffled static met her ears, followed by a few words that she was able to make out, something about gas, attack, and safety.

  She pressed the transmit button.”Is anyone receiving on this channel? Mayday, mayday, mayday!”

  A reply was instant, but static-filled. Danika cursed and turned up the volume. Still nothing. She swiped the pile of garbage and broken radios off the desk, clearing a path to get to the base station unit. She fiddled with the dials long enough to get a clear channel and raised the mic to her mouth.

  “Shut up!” she yelled at the wounded cops, who either growled or cursed at her, all trying to fight each other, even in their incapacitated states.

  “All units, fall back to the castle, repeat fall back to the castle! There are no signs of the—” The signal faded into static again. “…jamming us. Say again: all units fall back to the castle!”

  Pounding on the other side of the fire door caused her to drop the radio transmitter, draw her pistol and take up a defensive position. Her eyes scanned the room. Metal bookshelves lined every wall. There was only one way in or out: the fire doors. She could see it buckle with every impact. More than one voice shouted at once.

  Knulla.

  Keeping her pistol aimed at the door, Danika shuffled sideways around the piles of debris and toward the first man she’d shot in the leg. The second man, who’d been in the corner damaging supplies, had a rifle slung across his back, though it had tangled on an overturned chair and kept him trapped and spitting mad. She reached down, drew the duty knife from his chest harness and slashed the ripcord sling across his chest while he glared at her. Holstering her sidearm as she stood, Danika pulled the rifle free, dropped the magazine, and found it fully loaded. He started to rise and she kicked him in the forehead, dropping him like a sack of rocks. Danika turned back to the rifle and slammed the magazine home, yanked the charging bolt back, and brought it to her cheek.

  The fire door crashed open and to her horror, the hallway was filled with a general melee. Cops in uniforms, civilians, even cops wearing blood- and rain-slicked yellow overcoats pummeled each other in the hallway.

  Fists and legs flew; men and women screamed. The two men who’d kicked open the fire doors looked surprised for a moment that it had worked. They glanced at each other, then snarled and ran toward her. Danika fired two shots, dropping them both with wounded legs. The sound of the gunfire caught everyone’s attention. In a general wave of anger, the main body of people in the hallway surged forward.

  Bloody hell.

  Danika squeezed the trigger and picked her targets, trying to wound rather than kill. Through the muzzle flash and the strobe emergency lights in the hallway, Danika watched body after flailing body fall beneath the hail of bullets she unleashed in their direction. She marched grimly forward, cutting a bloody swath through the wall of flesh before her as the wounded clawed at her and fought each other on the ground.

  Jayne is killing you all, not me. I’m going to avenge you. All of you. Jayne did this…

  She was halfway down the hallway when her controlled bursts emptied the rifle. The first man to survive the onslaught unscathed took a step forward and received her rifle butt to the throat. He staggered back, gagging and clawing at his neck before being knocked to the floor by the woman behind him. Her bloodied hair a tangled, grisly mess, she reached forward, raking at Danika with claw-like fingernails.

  Someone bit through her pants and sent a wave of pain up her right leg. She dispatched the woman in front of her with a palm-strike to the chin, then screamed and swung the empty rifle down, catching another woman—her teeth still in Danika’s thigh—in the side of the head, dropping her, but losing her rifle in the process.

  She pulled the pistol from her waistband and fired three shots, dropping two more people. Hands clawed at her ankles, attempting to pull her down into the morass of infected people. Another pistol whip broke her left leg free of a death grip and she plodded forward, ignoring the screams and snapping teeth.

  * * *

  By now she was knee-deep in wounded and pissed-off people. Once she made it through the last two cops standing in her way, she’d be free and clear. Both of them wore yellow slickers stained red with blood and vomit. The one on the left raised a shotgun and aimed at her. With no other choice, Danika fired once and excavated the back of his head against the far wall. He fell sideways, tripping his partner. Danika shifted her aim and squeezed the trigger, hoping to take him in the leg, but nothing happened.

  She hadn’t even noticed the slide had racked back, leaving her weapon empty and useless. That had never happened before. Fear and doubt wound a sudden knot in her stomach. Had she been infected?

  As she took her eyes off the gun, the man reached out and tried to snatch the gas mask off her face.

  30

  Debriefing

  Senator Tecumseh brought a steaming cup of tea to his lips and drank, leaning against the stone wall in their little room. Cooper thought the castle cops had called it Argyle Tower, but their accents were so thick, he couldn’t be sure what the hell they’d said.

  “…and that’s how we ended up here,” Tecumseh said.

  “Thank you, by the way,” Eli put in, pointedly looking at Cooper. He
winced and looked down at the medic applying a clean bandage to his leg. “Will I need stitches?”

  “For a wee scratch like that? Och, dinna fash yerself, man,” the medic scoffed as he stood, dusting his hands.

  “What?” asked Eli. He glanced at the senator. “Are they speaking English?”

  “How many did you encounter?” asked the leader of the castle guards, a gruff, balding, middle-aged man in tight-fitting riot armor.

  The senator shook his head, his coal-black hair glistening in the light of the fire behind him. “I…I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mr. Braaten for the tactical details.”

  The gray-eyed guard turned his steely gaze on Cooper. “You look like you can handle yourself.”

  “I’ve been around,” Cooper allowed.

  “What do you make of it?”

  Cooper shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like that shit before. It’s like a goddamn horror movie come to life out there.”

  “We heard reports of some kind of gas attack, then the radios went out…next thing we know, there’s gunfire down the hill and then you lot come tearing ass up to the gate and you’re shooting at cops.”

  Cooper sighed. “I don’t know shit about any gas attack. The senator there was on his way to the Parliament Building for a vote with the U.N. when our convoy was attacked en route—”

  “That true, sir?” asked the castellan.

  “It is. We tried to escape, but crashed…somewhere near the Parliament Building. Mr. Braaten and the inspector here saved our lives.”

  “Just doing my job,” replied Angus over the rim of his steaming mug.

  “How exactly did you do that?” asked the castellan.

  Cooper grinned. “I took out the trash.”

  The cop blinked. “What—?”