She took a deep shuddering breath. “I think so. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to hear normally again.”
“Gary, I will send some men down to clean up. Then we’ll take the berserkers to another, more secure site. Can you make sure Sydney has her things and bring her out back?”
“Sure,” Gary nodded. He caught Sydney’s eye and narrowed his. His message was clear. Now or never.
“I-I can move them.”
Mark studied her for a moment. “Are you sure you are feeling up to it?”
She nodded. “Yeah.” She eyed the gun, making it clear it made her nervous. “They will be calmer if I do it.”
“Very well then,” he grinned. He slid the gun back into the holster under his jacket.
Sydney turned to the berserkers. “Please come forward.” She had to ask them twice before they got over their terror and shuffled to stand a few feet in front of them. She took deep calming breaths, fortifying herself for what was to come. As before, the creatures seemed to pick up on her intentions and they calmed and went still, like a pride of lions lying in wait. Maybe this won’t be as bad as I thought? She turned back to Mark. “Lead the way.”
“No, after you. I insist.”
Fuck. “Sure,” she tried to smile but it didn’t work. “Guys,” she looked steadily at her charges. “Pick Jennifer up.” Jake bent and hauled the groaning woman to her feet. “Now. Are you ready?” They all met her eye. Wild and feral, but ready. She could see their focus. “Kill him.”
She didn’t have to tell them twice. Mark snarled at her and made to pull his gun again. But he was too slow. The berserkers were on him in one leap. They bit, scratched, punched, kicked, and tore him but he never made a sound. Gary pulled her back into the lobby area and they stared in horror at the berserkers as they ripped into Mark like starved zombies. The sounds were the worst part. Deep guttural grunts and high pitched shrieks were accompanied by sloshing and tearing. When he stopped fighting they let him go, stood and waited for Sydney to give them their next command. Every one of them seemed happy and satisfied while covered in blood and pieces of flesh. She was frozen in shock at the destruction.
“Let’s go,” Gary barked at her.
She jerked out of her stupor. “Follow us,” she told them. She hesitated to turn her back on them, but she needed to trust in her control over them.
She and Gary spun away from the mess that was the conference room and hurried towards the elevator. They only made it halfway before the doors dinged open and four men walked out. Including Jason. “Shit,” Gary gasped.
They didn’t have a chance to react before the new comers put the pieces together. Gary’s grip was torn from her arm as the bullets slammed into his chest causing him to stumble backwards and trip over his own feet.
Xander
By the time they made it back to their parents’ house, Xander was feeling exhausted and drained. But, he knew he wouldn’t sleep—not anytime soon. The man that had kidnapped them still needed to tell his story. Unfortunately, he was waiting on them to tell their story. Therefore, for most of the ride back everyone was silent—each waiting on the other to start.
Xander still couldn’t believe he was letting this man force them all back to their house. It seemed insane—but so did everything right now. And, besides, Xander told himself, if you really think about it—you know this guy isn’t out to kill you. He could have done that easily already. But, if the guy wasn’t trying to kill them, why did he want to go back to their house? Xander glanced at ET. Maybe the man was in the same shoes as the kid. On the run with no place to go.
The guy was clearly paranoid. He watched the traffic more than he watched Xander. Several times he told them to change directions and make turns that weren’t necessary. Zak caught Xander’s eye in the rearview a couple of times. Once he narrowed his eyes and Xander responded with a tiny shake. But, it wasn’t just that he thought trying to fight back would mostly likely get someone shot.
When Zak pulled into the garage everyone waited until the door was shut before climbing out. There was no point in advertising to the neighborhood—or any thugs watching them—they were being held hostage. Xander noticed that the man had let the gun dip so low it was mostly pointed at the ground. It only reinforced his theory that the guy wasn’t actually going to kill them. At this point, Xander knew he could take the gun before the man even registered what was happening. To prove his point, he turned his back on the guy crossed the alley into the garage and stepped into the kitchen without even acknowledging the guy or his gun. His statement must have been received because after he pulled beers from the fridge and turned back to the others, the man was sitting at the kitchen table with the gun out of site.
Shay caught his eye and raised a brow. “Well,” she said, taking a beer. “Who the hell are you?”
The guy looked up, sighed, and folded both hands on the table. “My name is Charlie Hacker.” He paused as if waiting for them to make some kind of connection.
“Are we supposed to know who you are?” Xander asked.
“Shit,” Charlie sighed again. “They’ve erased everything, haven’t they?”
“Aye!” ET blurted. “I remember your name.” Charlie looked both relieved and worried. “You wrote about the attacks.”
“I did.”
“You were connecting them early,” ET was growing more excited. ET turned to the others. “When I started trying to…to…plant the seeds, Hacker’s articles were some of the first I found that really made any real questions or theories about what was going on. This was months ago. How did you make the connection?” ET asked Hacker.
“My wife was one of the first attacked. She was jogging in Lincoln Park.” Hacker’s voice was hollow and brittle.
“Were there any witnesses?” Zak asked.
“Not really. Someone saw a man running away making growling sounds. The witness said he thought the attacker was high on something.”
“What did the cops say?” Xander could guess, but he asked anyway.
“They said it was an isolated event. They accepted the story that a tweaker attacked her.”
“But you didn’t believe them?”
“At first I did. But then I heard one of the cops say something like ‘like the last one.’ I can’t remember exactly what it was. But it was one of those things…where there is all this white noise going on around you but one thing stands out. That bit was the one thing that stood out. I tried to ask him about it but when they realized I had heard they clamed up. Tried to say I was just upset. So, I started investigating. I think it was mostly a way for me to distract myself. Lisa wasn’t dead. She was in a coma. And, if I was researching, sitting in the hospital next to her, I could focus on that instead of the constant noises. Beep. Beep. Beep. I just kept waiting for the beeping to stop and something worse to happen…” Hacker trailed off remembering.
Shay cleared her throat. “You were a blogger?”
Hacker shook himself. “I was. I had a personal blog. But I was a reporter too. I wrote for the Tribune.”
“Wrote?” Shay lowered herself onto a stool next to Xander.
“Yes. I was fired.”
“Why?” Xander had a feeling where this was going.
“After I posted, in my own blog mind you, about the connections and the possibility that more was going on than we were being told, I was summarily fired. My editor said they couldn’t have a conspiracy theorist writing for the paper.”
“But…?” Xander rubbed the back of his neck trying to relieve it of the weight that seemed to be permanently lodged there lately.
“There was more to it than that. I knew. I tried to question him but he wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”
“Why do you think he fired you?” Xander asked.
“Her. I think someone made her fire me.”
“Any ideas who?”
Hacker shrugged. “I kept posting though.”
“What happened?” ET scooted closer to the table.
“All of my posts disappeared.”
“A lot of others’ posts have too,” ET assured him.
“I know. Some of the authors were friends of mine.”
“What are the other bloggers saying? Did they get in trouble with anyone?”
“I don’t know.”
The room seemed to grow colder. “You don’t know?” Xander raised an eyebrow.
“No. I haven’t been able to get in touch with any of them. They’ve just…dropped off the face of the Earth.”
“Shit.” Xander remembered he and Sydney going over the list of dead or missing techies that had connections to the dreams she and others had.
“What have you been doing since then? Since you realized your blogs were gone?” Shay asked him.
“At first I just kept researching because I just didn’t think it was possible. It had to be some kind of coincidence. How did a shit-ton of blog posts, reposts, cross-posts just disappear? And it wasn’t even just the actual posts about the attacks. The whole blogs were gone. Mine included. Then, how did a handful of people, at least a handful, also disappear? This is America for God’s sake.”
When he didn’t keep going, Xander prodded him on. “What happened then?”
“I continued to sit with my wife while I did research. I left for five minutes to go to the bathroom. Five fucking minutes.” His words were forced past a lump in his throat and he stared at the table. “When I came back. She was dead.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Sydney slid to a stop as Gary fell to the floor. She barely had time to register it was Jason firing before it felt like a horse kicked her high in the chest. Her breath was knocked out of her as she shuffled backwards, tripping over Gary and nearly landing on top of him. She looked back to tell the berserkers to hide. But she didn’t need to. They had scattered and had taken cover behind the two desks that flanked the doors to the conference room. The sound of the gun shots and the impact caused everything to go quite. Her breath whooshed in and out as she fought past the shock that tried to consume her.
Then, her ears popped, causing sound to rush back in time for her to hear men arguing.
“—told you Boss wants her alive, goddamn it!”
“She was running. She’s not anymore.”
Sydney looked to her left and saw her shoulder bloodied and as if it was waiting for her to notice, it burst into scorching pain. She groaned and looked to Gary. His blank eyes stared up at the ceiling and a terrible keening sound slipped from her throat. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, what now? Even though he had never pulled it on her, Sydney knew Gary carried a gun. She saw it tucked under his shirt at his waist. She tried to move her left arm but it roared with pain.
“Get them,” said the man that had been arguing with Jason.
Footsteps hurried closer. “What about those things?” a new voice asked.
“If they resist, kill them.”
A dark-skinned man leaned over Gary. “Shit! He’s dead. Boss is going to be pissed.”
“He was helping her.”
“I can’t believe you shot your own father.”
“Fuck him. And fuck you too.”
Jason’s face slid into view above Sydney. “You alive?” he sneered at her.
“Fuck you,” she croaked.
“Maybe. We’ll have time for that later.”
She tried to spit at him but her mouth was too dry. When Jason yanked her up by her left arm she nearly passed out. It hurt so much her vision went black and her body seized with pain, she beyond the point of screaming. It took sheer willpower to not only stay conscious, but snatch the gun from Gary’s waist as Jason lifted her to her feet. She had never fired a gun before but at this this distance it was pretty self-explanatory.
The look of surprise on Jason’s face made her smile through the agony as she rammed the gun into his chin. “Let go of my arm and drop your gun,” she growled.
“They won’t let you out of here. Whether you kill me or not.”
“Fine,” she shrugged her good shoulder and pulled the trigger. A thin geyser of blood erupted from the side of his head. The recoil knocked the gun out of her hand and jarred her whole body hard enough that it caused a fresh wave of lava to erupt from her wound. “Kill them,” she screamed at the berserkers as she dropped to the floor. A poof of drywall in direct line with where her head had just been sent a cloud of dust in the air. She had no idea where the gun had gone and no time to search for it. Instead, she rolled towards the hallway screaming in fear and pain. Two shots followed her but then the men started screaming and shooting at something in the room with them.
Sydney didn’t have time to feel guilty for sacrificing the eight berserkers, she was in survival mode. Using her good arm, she climbed the wall until she was on her feet. Her breaths hissed through her teeth as she half-ran, half-stumbled down the hallway. When she made it to the windowed room where her two newest charges were being held she sent up a silent prayer that they were ready. She unlocked the door and threw it open. The two men stared at her for a moment. They were both slightly bruised from their capture, but she was relieved to see, neither of them had the same frenzied look that marked a berserker. “You guys ready to get out of here?” Sydney felt the connection take hold and they both nodded as the orbs flickered in her vision again. “Let’s go.”
At the end of the hall was a door marked with an emergency exit sign. “Stay behind me,” she told them, still refusing to feel guilty. If they were behind her they could serve as a shield. She let her weight fall against the crash bar and the door flew open. At the same time, a loud buzzing erupted. “Fuck!” The fire alarm. The reverberating siren rattled through her spine. Shit! Fire exit! Not only would it alert Boss’ men as to where she was, but it would most likely bring the fire department. While, it might help her, it also might get innocent men killed. “Hurry,” she yelled over her shoulder.
The combination of her shock, wounds, and terror made for a bad combination with stairs. Two steps down the first flight and her legs collapsed under her. She rolled down the tiled steps all the way to the landing. Her head spun and her vision was blurred and her bones screamed where they had cracked against concrete. I’ll never make fun of falling women in movies again. “Help me,” she croaked. She grimaced at the taste of blood in her mouth. She had either bitten her tongue or knocked some teeth out. Everything hurt too much for her to tell at the moment.
“What’s your name?” she asked the first berserker to reach her. Luckily, he was the bigger, and likely stronger, of the two.
“Darren,” he muttered. His dark skin damp with sweat, but he seemed eerily calm otherwise. His face was placidly still despite everything going on. The man behind him was twitchy with his eyes darting in all directions and his breaths were coming in pants.
“Can you carry me?”
Instead of answering, he squatted beside her, put one arm under her butt and the other behind her back. He lifted her effortlessly, but she grunted at the pressure on her shoulder. Darren hurried down the steps, barely slowed by her weight. At the first floor, the stairs opened to both the lobby and the parking lot. “Wait,” she stopped him.
Her phone, and knife, were in the closet. She had only seconds to decide what to do. “Through there!” If she didn’t have her phone, she wouldn’t have any way to contact Xander and the others. She, and the berserkers, wouldn’t last long on foot. She had no idea how many men Boss had here, but she wasn’t dumb enough to think it was just the four above her.
The fire alarm continued to blare as she pointed the way towards the closet with her good arm. Darren jogged down the hall and she had to grit her teeth against the pain. Her head felt like it was splitting in two. Her shoulder felt like a white, hot poker was being stabbed into it over and over. To top it off, her knee, the same one she had injured during Doc’s tests, was throbbing from her fall. “In there. Put me down.”
Darren set her on her feet and she opened the door. The sound of the closet openin
g almost masked the sound of bodies crashing into the fire door they had just come through. Sydney didn’t think, she reached back and pulled Darren inside at the same time the other berserker was knocked off his feet by multiple gunshots to the torso. Footsteps raced down the hall and she swung the closet door shut. It had barely latched before a weight crashed into it causing her to slide back a foot. “Help!” she shouted to Darren. When he threw his weight against the door it finally closed. Luckily, Sydney was shorter than the man on the other side expected. The shot he fired splintered the door inches above her head. She looked at Darren and they made eye contact. Berserker or not, he realized the same thing she did at the same time. The next shot wouldn’t miss.
Xander
Xander stared at Hacker for several moments, at a loss for words. Finally, Shay did the favors.
"Shit. I'm sorry," she murmured. Hacker nodded, clearly unable to speak. "How did you end up here?" She asked him.
"For a few days...I was just lost. Then, eventually, I realized I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself. The whole stages of grief thing I guess. I finally hit anger. I decided to try to find out what was going on. I didn't have a job or family to worry about...so I said 'fuck it.' At this time, the blogs and posts hadn't completely disappeared yet. Basically, I couldn't find the writers, so I just tried to find out as much about them as I could. I was searching for the four that I knew personally. One had been arrested, I found death certificates for two of them, and the last one was listed as missing."
"Damn," Zak shook his head when Hacker went quiet for a moment. "What was the arrest for?"
"Child pornography."
"Fuck," Zak scowled.
"I am 100% sure that it is bullshit though," Hacker added bitterly.
"How can you be sure," Shay asked carefully.
"Well, for starters, I knew her pretty well. Besides the fact that women are rarely child pornographers...I just knew her. I guess every sicko has plenty of people who say they knew them and would have never guessed it, but it's all just too...convenient."
Show No Fear (The Dyian Series Book 2) Page 23