It was too much, overwhelming. She thought back to the video of the agitated young man before he started to harm himself. She would know how he felt—soon, unless she was able to get the antidote. But what were the odds of that happening, really? Even if she and Tanner handed over the IP address on the ring and the password generator—even if Baxter had proof that he now had access to all of Walter’s data—what motivation did he have to keep her alive? He’d already proved several times over that he was not afraid to take human lives. He’d dispatched Sheila, a woman he’d known for years, without a second thought. Why would he care about killing two more?
Even if, by some sheer stroke of luck, he decided to spare Carina, he had nothing at all invested in Tanner. Tanner was just an ordinary teen, now that he’d received the antidote; he was an innocent. Carina managed to steal a few glances at him as the car sped east. He looked calm, his complexion restored, but he had a look of concern in his eyes when he returned her glance; he showed no fear other than his worry for her. He must have known that he was doomed, but he seemed to accept his fate calmly.
Carina heard a soft tearing sound and looked down at her hands. She had been gripping the seat on either side, and without realizing it had actually managed to rip it open in two places as she thought about Tanner. The foam innards of the seat pushed against the fabric upholstery. Joe glanced over with his eyebrows raised above the mirrored sunglasses he slipped on; when he saw what Carina had done, she thought she detected a faint smirk on his face. No one else seemed to notice.
Carina wondered if Joe had hurt people before, if that was part of his job description. Even if he had, being infected made him many times more deadly. It was what the virus had been developed for, after all. That and defense, but Carina would bet that when the Calaveras Lab people made their pitch, when they described all the ways the armed services could use the virus to increase the efficiency of their troops, the thought on everyone’s mind was the on-the-ground conflicts plaguing war-torn nations the world over. How appealing would it be to think of sending troops home alive instead of in body bags? Of lowering the incidences of civilian casualties and friendly-fire events? Of turning the tide on drug wars being waged near the nation’s borders?
But there was the other side to consider. A force like this could not be contained. It hadn’t even been perfected, and it was already leaking out to the wrong side, all because of a single disgruntled and greedy employee. You could never prevent that kind of sabotage. If the virus was released into the world, it would certainly find its way to all sides of the conflict.
And increasing the skill sets of both sides of a battle had to result in more dead—not fewer.
Tanner was as good as dead. Carina probably was too. In their possession was the key to evil on a scale she could only imagine. Maybe it was time, finally, to give up. To destroy the seeds of ruin, even if it meant destroying themselves.
They were passing the midpoint of the bridge, the span over Treasure Island. It was another couple of miles before they finished crossing the bay and then another hour to get to the wilderness where the cabin was located.
Carina knew she was no match for Joe once they got out of the car. They were both infected, but he was still in the early stages, with more precise control of his body. Plus, he had several inches and fifty pounds on her.
But if she acted now …
All it would take was one deliberate move. If she threw herself at the front seat, grabbed the wheel, she could send them through the guardrail. They were going fast enough for the momentum to easily carry them through the barrier and into the water. And even if any of them somehow made it out alive, the password generator would be destroyed. The data would be lost.
Carina closed her eyes, breathing in and out as calmly as she could. She willed her heartbeat to stabilize; imagined her muscles relaxing, her breathing slowing, just as she did before track meets.
And a thought came to her.
An idea so audacious, so risky, that she had no idea where it had come from. Her eyes flew open and her lips parted. It was crazy, it probably wouldn’t work, but it gave them a chance.
A chance to save Tanner was all she needed.
“Oh, all right,” she said quietly, in a defeated tone. “I have what you want. But it’s back in Martindale.”
Tanner carefully kept his eyes forward. Carina knew he had to be wondering what she was up to, but he didn’t dare give her away.
“It’s at my school,” Carina improvised. It was Saturday; the janitors would have finished their weekend duties yesterday. If she was lucky, the school would be abandoned; it was unlikely any teachers would be catching up on their work this early in the morning.
Requirements for a showdown with an armed sociopath and an infected mercenary? Large, open area—check. Minimization of potential for civilian casualties—check. Possibilities for those who were neither mercenaries nor infected—like Tanner, for instance—to get the hell out of the way—again, she hoped, check.
It wasn’t much of a plan, except for one thing. In the cabin, they were certainly doomed. Baxter had all the advantages: he knew the layout, surroundings, and terrain. He probably had additional weapons there, as well as a plan for disposing of their bodies.
At the school, she could make it a fairer fight. She knew every inch of the campus, since her training had taken her everywhere from the basement stairwell when they’d trained indoors on rainy days to the farthest corner of the freshman practice field.
“What exactly are you offering to give me?”
Carina slipped off her ring. She stared at it for a moment, allowing herself to remember her mother’s embrace last night, the way her eyes had softened when she’d looked at Carina. She pressed the green stone to her lips, a final kiss.
Then she handed it over the seat. Baxter took it, never taking his eyes off the road.
“That’s my mom’s ring. Inscribed inside, underneath the stone, is an IP address. My uncle used an overseas VPN to back up all of his work. It’s all there, don’t worry, we checked.”
“How do you get in?” Baxter didn’t bother to conceal the excitement in his voice.
“You need a password,” Carina said. “It’s generated by a device I hid at the school. It creates a new password every few seconds, automatically syncing with the server. It’s the only one—if there’s another way to get in, it died with Walter.”
“Two-factor authentication,” Baxter said, whistling through his teeth. “Nice. What did you do, hide it in your locker?”
“Are you kidding?” Carina said, thinking fast. “They can do random searches these days, did you know that? Civil liberties don’t extend to kids, apparently.”
“Poor you,” Baxter said drily. “So where’d you stash it?”
“On the roof.” Carina could feel herself flush. She didn’t dare look at Tanner. “There’s a heating and air-conditioning unit up there, and I hid it inside.”
“Exposed to the elements?” Baxter said sharply. “Are you insane?”
“No, of course not. It’s well protected—you’re just going to have to trust me on that.”
“That’s a lot of trust you’re asking for, little girl.”
“Well,” Carina said with a confidence she didn’t feel, “if it turns out I’m wrong, what do you lose? You can let me die as easily in the high school parking lot as a cabin in the woods, right?”
Baxter nodded slowly. “I guess that would work, even if it would be a little messy. By the time you started creating a public disturbance and the police answered the call, your communication faculties would be gone. Your heart rate would be up over one fifty, and if you didn’t stroke out, organ shutdown would follow. Give the ER docs the shock of a lifetime. And I’d love to see how fast the lab would cover that up. Of course, you know I wouldn’t be able to let Tanner go. It’d be back to plan A for him: the bottom of the lake.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Carina said. “I give you the password gen
erator, you let us go. Right?”
“Right.”
They were each lying to the other, Carina thought as the early-morning traffic moved slowly along Highway 24. At this rate, it would be an hour’s drive back to the high school. The beautiful green foothills were dotted with wildflowers, and a few fluffy clouds scuttled across the sky. It was a perfect spring day, the kind that had always made her grateful to live in the area.
And to think she had been considering going to Cal State Long Beach. The ocean had a certain appeal, of course, but she would miss the rugged beauty of the coastal range, the mountains she’d grown up with. On the other side was Berkeley … and, for that matter, Alta Vista Community College. If she’d applied to Alta Vista instead of Long Beach, she would have been twenty minutes from Tanner, close enough to see him as often as she wanted.
How had it taken this long for her to realize that what mattered most was being near Tanner? She could have thrived at Alta Vista. A few kids from her school would be attending; she would have been able to find a roommate easily.
It was a perfect fantasy, so Carina was almost surprised by the tears pricking her eyes. Well, she would make one part of it true, at least. Tanner would attend Berkeley next fall. He was healthy, he had received the antidote. In time—maybe not next year or the year after that, but eventually—he would put this behind him.
All he had to do was remember the door that led from the roof into the building. On the night they’d made love, she and Tanner had discovered that the door was propped open. A scattering of cigarette butts revealed why: someone made a regular habit of going up on the roof to smoke. The door locked from the inside, which was probably why the smoker used an old paint can to keep it open, to make sure he could get back in.
As long as Tanner could get through the door and close it, he’d be safe. Sure, it was possible—even likely—that Joe could force his way through the door somehow, but Carina would be willing to bet that Baxter would prefer to use his rent-a-soldier to keep tabs on her. The loss of Tanner would anger him, no doubt, but not enough to distract him from his mission.
And not nearly as much as discovering that Carina had led him on a wild-goose chase. She squeezed her eyes shut. Well, once Tanner was safe, there was a handy way to make sure that she didn’t suffer an agonizing death. An easy out, right over the edge of the roof. She wouldn’t survive a four-story drop, and her death would be instantaneous. Painless.
Traffic cleared when they passed through Walnut Creek and continued southeast toward the Central Valley. Carina watched the familiar sights going by, knowing she probably wouldn’t ever see any of them again. The mall where she’d shopped with her friends. A rival high school, where she’d attended half a dozen track meets. A park Uncle Walter had taken her to when she was little.
And then they were inside the Martindale town limits. It looked so ordinary, so peaceful. Yesterday, when she woke up, it had seemed all wrong that her town should look so serene on the day she would be burying her uncle. She’d resented the well-dressed crowd of mourners; every smile, every pleasant word had been an affront to her sadness. She’d resented Sheila—and how wrong she had been about that. Walter too. They’d misjudged the awkward, reserved woman who ended up losing her life because she tried to help.
All three of them were gone: her mother, her uncle, and now Sheila. Everyone who cared about Carina ended up dead.
No more.
Carina bit down on her lip hard enough to taste blood. Good. The blood was a reminder that she would embrace violence, if violence was what it took to end this. A little bloodshed now to avoid the loss of countless innocent people later on the soil of Albania and other conflict-torn lands, places where the strong prevailed and the weak perished. Carina would not allow the virus to add to the tally of the dead. A small victory, perhaps, but one she was willing to fight for.
The high school loomed ahead. One of the oldest buildings in town, the four-story stone edifice had survived the tremors of the 1906 earthquake centered thirty miles away. New buildings had been added to the campus over the years; the auditorium hailed from the sixties, the pool and gymnasium from the eighties. But Carina loved the old main building best.
She would have graduated from Martindale High this June, and Baxter had been right—she would have attended the prom with Tanner. Carina had been looking at dresses in department store windows since early spring. If all of this hadn’t happened, she might have gone shopping with Emma and Nikki, Walter’s credit card in her purse, and picked out a dress in turquoise blue, because Tanner said he liked that shade best on her. She would have worn her hair up, and her mother’s ring.
Carina inhaled sharply. She couldn’t lose focus now.
“Pull around the side,” she directed Baxter. There were only a few other cars in the parking lot, none of them familiar. Out on the field, a pair of middle-aged women in velour sweat suits walked laps around the track.
Baxter parked near the edge of the lot. Carina wondered whether an expensive sedan with tinted windows would raise eyebrows. Surely if anyone saw them get out—a young, handsome man in a suit and another in camouflage, accompanied by two high school students—they would take notice. But this side of the high school backed up to the foothills, and there were no houses, no walking paths, no traffic to see them.
Baxter held Carina’s door open. She got out stiffly. The tremors were getting closer together, tiny seizures electrifying her nerves up and down her limbs. There was an unpleasant metallic taste in her mouth that swallowing could not get rid of. Her skin prickled along the tops of her arms, on the back of her neck and scalp, and she had to resist the urge to scratch. She remembered the test subject’s frantic attack on himself, his fingers bloodied, and shuddered with revulsion and fear.
Joe maneuvered his considerable bulk out of the car and waited for Tanner to follow. Tanner got out and came directly to Carina, putting his arms around her.
“Hey,” Baxter said, but Tanner ignored him, holding Carina close.
“Are you really okay?” Carina whispered, inhaling his scent and pressing her face into his neck.
“Yeah, I feel almost normal. Still a little amped up, like I’ve had five cups of coffee. Nothing worse than that. I bet I’m in for a hell of a crash, though.”
Carina winced at his word choice. She wished she could communicate her plan to him—but she couldn’t say anything in front of Joe or Baxter.
“What about you?” he murmured.
“Fine,” Carina lied as firmly as she could, gritting her teeth and tensing her muscles so that Tanner wouldn’t feel the trembling and tics, and forced a smile.
Baxter gave Tanner a disgusted shove. “Enough of that. Joe, help our friend here pay attention.”
Joe put his hands under Tanner’s arms, picking him off the ground as though he weighed no more than a bouquet of flowers. Tanner’s feet dangled but he didn’t react, didn’t say anything, and after a second Joe let him drop. Just proving a point.
“You first,” Baxter told Carina, pointing to the fire escape. “Then Joe. I’ll climb up behind Tanner. You won’t give me any trouble, will you, buddy?”
Tanner didn’t answer, even though Baxter had his gun out. Not taking any chances, even though Tanner was no longer infected.
Smart move, Carina thought; she wouldn’t count Tanner out.
She led the way to the fire escape, her heart racing in a ragged rhythm. Sawhorses and caution signs had been set up around the bottom. Joe picked them up like toothpicks and tossed them out of the way.
“Up you go,” Baxter said.
Carina put her hand on the lowest rung, the metal cold and rough in her grip, and turned to look at the others. If she were alone, she’d have risked making a dash for it—her supercharged body could have easily tackled the climb in record time. She’d bet she would have had a fifty-fifty chance that Baxter could take aim and hit her before she got to the roof, and if she’d managed to get a head start she could probably have beaten J
oe too. He was bigger than her, but that might actually have worked against him, all other things being equal, once they were on the flat ground of the roof. Carina would have sprinted like hell, and she just might have been able to outrun him.
But with Tanner on the ground, she couldn’t even consider bolting. Not when Baxter might shoot him out of spite as quickly as he would for cause.
Carina climbed slowly. She felt the structure shudder when Joe pulled himself onto the bottom rungs; moments later it did so two more times when Tanner and Baxter started to climb.
Joe stayed within inches of her, silent except for the clanging of his hands and feet on the metal rungs. Behind him, she could hear Tanner’s and Baxter’s breathing as they ascended with less precision and efficiency. With her heightened senses, Carina was conscious of the stark differences between those like her and ordinary, uninfected humans. To her acute hearing, the breathing of even fit men like Tanner and Baxter sounded labored.
She reached the top and pulled herself up and over the low wall at the edge. Her foot slipped when it hit the roof, trembling so badly that it had buckled on impact. Her body was beginning to deteriorate. Carina swallowed down her panic; if she couldn’t depend on her reactions, how could she carry out her plan?
She took a couple more steps and waited. Joe, cresting the edge, looked unruffled. His footsteps were sure, his motions perfectly economical. He’d probably received his injection right before climbing into the trunk of the car; he couldn’t have been infected for more than a few hours.
Infected Page 17