by Craig Spence
There are other ways out, she said, but only one way in for the police: the loading ramp. If it closes, Hindquist wins. Believe me brother, he wins.
For a second, no longer, Cap weighed his sister’s words. Then resolve hardened his features and he gestured in the direction they’d been headed. Go! he shouted. Let’s go!
Genie knew the AMOS floor plan by heart. The mechanical room for the loading ramp is just round the corner, she announced, switching her K-Pack to cannon mode.
More automatic weapons fire erupted from the receiving area, short bursts and answering volleys. Bertrand must have got his hands on a gun, Cap cried.
Genie barely heard his jubilant report. All her senses focused round the corner, on the mechanical room doorway. Hindquist should have posted guards there. He knew it was the weak link in his defences and would be targeted by a knowledgeable enemy. She sniffed and listened. Nothing. He’d been preoccupied, she supposed, overwhelmed by the catastrophic events that threatened AMOS. The room was unprotected.
Go! Genie said to Cap.
What!
Go help Bertrand and the others. They need you. Keep them together and move in this direction, always in this direction. I can disable the ramp on my own.
But how . . .
GO! she roared. It’s not guarded. You’re not needed here.
Help them!
Genie heard Cap’s claws scrabbling as he twisted and ran back down the passage toward the receiving area. She concentrated her entire being on the mechanical room. As she rounded the corner she retrieved blueprints, wiring charts, and layouts from memory. Any second now she expected the whine of hydraulic pumps to kick in as the ramp began to shut.
She’d often taken part in lockdown drills: abort the loading, get everything down the ramp, seal up AMOS. A drill isn’t the same as the real thing, though, she smiled grimly. In the mayhem Hindquist’s minions had lost focus. The window of opportunity had been kept open longer than she could have hoped.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The cannon bucked in her harness as the mechanical room door blew open, wrenched off its hinges. Genie clambered into the concrete cavern, scanning quickly. Backup generator, meters, wires, hoses . . . Hidden in the jumble of equipment were the vital components she had to disable, but she couldn’t remember exactly which wire, which motor, which hose was critical to the ramp’s operation.
A clicking sound emerged from an electrical box behind her, followed by the whir of a motor. With a groan, the huge ramp assembly began to swing shut like a gigantic jaw. Genie resisted the impulse to fire randomly into the room. She didn’t have enough ammo or time to disable the machinery that way.
Her firing had to be precise. The noise of an indiscriminate assault would prevent her from locating the vital component she needed to identify. She watched the wires and hoses intently. Another click, more whirring, and one of the hoses twitched like a flexed muscle.
Boom! Boom! Boom! She cut the line with a perfectly aimed volley, its fluid gushing out onto the mechanical room floor.
When he heard the first burst of gunfire echoing up from the receiving area, Hindquist allowed himself a brief cry of exultation. The guard he’d left behind must have found the boy and Einstein.
“Well done!” he said.
Things were tilting in his favour. The plant was going into lockdown mode. Then it would be a simple matter of tracking down the infiltrators and eliminating them. Genie would have to be among the casualties.
He still couldn’t believe she’d betrayed him, but couldn’t prove she hadn’t, either. She had to die. Doctor Molar had plenty of genetic material to resurrect the breed, and they would be able to collect genes from the male SMART dog, too. Soon the canine project would go into full-scale production.
“Look out, world,” Hindquist smirked.
Too bad about Genie, but it would be best to start from scratch, with dogs that had no connection to the world outside. Their loyalties would be forged completely in the AMOS training facility.
These pleasant musings were shattered by more bursts of automatic weapons fire. “What?” Hindquist said, frowning as the full implications of the fire pattern sunk in.
Then he roared. The guards in the receiving area were engaged in a pitched battle.
“Back!” he bellowed at the line of troops sweeping toward the Research and Development wing. “Back to shipping. The enemy is behind us!”
The battle now would be for the soft underbelly of AMOS: its portal and ramp. Suddenly, with a sharp stab, Hindquist became aware of a potentially fatal error. He hadn’t posted guards at the mechanical room door. That’s where Genie would strike if she had betrayed him.
A file of troops jogged past, heading for the receiving area. Hindquist waved them on like a frantic traffic cop. “Go! Go!” he urged, then followed. The line charged into the cavernous shipping area and was greeted by a volley of gunfire. Bullets whizzed overhead, smacking into the boxes and crates behind them, pinging off the metal storage racks. The soldiers retreated in disarray.
Suddenly Hindquist’s heart clenched like a fist. “The ramp!” he groaned. It was still down.
“Close the bloody ramp!” he bellowed into his radio.
“But we’ll be trapped up here, sir!” the frantic commander objected.
“Close it now and get away from here. Go with the truck.”
“Yes sir.”
Then Hindquist heard something that made the hair stand on the back of his neck: a dog howling in the night. He tilted his head and listened. There it was again. Yes, he was sure of it. But the sound wasn’t natural. It was no dog baying out there in the darkness. It was the plaintive, mechanical wail of a police car’s siren. And another. And another. Three units in the distance.
Coincidence?
“Don’t be a fool!” Hindquist mocked. The girl, Ariel, had not been neutralized. She’d called the police from outside AMOS’ jamming radius.
“Get the ramp hoisted and get yourselves out of here now!” he yelled.
Like an awakened behemoth, the ramp shuddered and began to rise.
“Good!” Hindquist cheered. He would send troops to block any of the secret exits Genie might use, then continue mopping up. Even if police swarmed the place, Advanced Military Ordinance Supply would go undetected. The subterranean zone was perfectly concealed. You could set off a stick of dynamite and no one upstairs would hear it. If only the guards and truck could get away, the secret part of Hindquist’s operations might escape detection.
He ran through these scenarios rapidly as the ramp began to close. Watching nervously, he prayed for the smooth docking of the massive slab in its locking rings. About a third of the way through the procedure, though, the unthinkable happened. Hindquist heard three muffled explosions from the mechanical room. Then the ramp stopped dead, quivering in midair like a gigantic diving board.
“No!” he gasped. “No, it can’t be!”
“It’s jammed, sir!” the frantic guard was shouting upstairs. “It’s not responding at all!”
Outside the sirens were getting closer, their wails converging into one morose song of accusation.
“I’m out of here!” the guard yelled.
“Come back!” Hindquist hollered. “Stay at your post!”
But there would be no calling him back, Hindquist realized. His troops upstairs would be in full retreat. The power of AMOS had been broken in that sector, and soon the last vestiges of his authority in the underground regions would collapse. Still, even in defeat there was work to do. A plan to execute.
“What are you waiting for?” he bellowed at the staring guards. “Storm that doorway and kill any living thing you find in there. Do it now!”
Several guards obeyed, but were driven back by another barrage. Hindquist saw the boy firing from one side of the passageway door, and pointed him out frantically. “Get him!” he raged. But another gun began chattering from the other side of the room, setting up a deadly crossfire.
“Genie!” Hind
quist moaned, catching a glimpse of her on the far side of the ramp. Every round she fired pierced his soul, igniting a hatred that no amount of vengeance would ever cure.
“Attack!” he bellowed.
But his guards ignored him, dropping their weapons and running. Some fled back into the warehouse, others tried to swing up onto the ramp and make their ways out of AMOS, rats deserting a sinking ship.
“So this is it!” Hindquist laughed. “This is what it all comes down to. Well then, there is a time to retreat and regroup, and then a time to seek revenge.” He pulled a transmitter out of his jacket pocket, hesitated just a moment, then punched in a series of numbers.
“Scuttle sequence initiated,” a metallic voice announced through the AMOS public address system. “One minute, fifty-eight seconds and counting.”
Hindquist turned and fled into the maze of AMOS’ underground passageways. All around him people were stampeding toward the ramp.
“Cockroaches,” he spat.
“Scuttle sequence initiated,” the speakers droned. “One minute, fifty-four seconds and counting.”
“Scuttle sequence initiated . . . ”
Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!
Suddenly the lower receiving area was abandoned except for the crowd trying to climb up onto the ramp. Genie, who had risked a dash across the open floor, herded the others back down the corridor toward the mechanical room, but instead of turning right, they veered left at the T-junction.
“What’s going on?” Bertrand yelled.
Hindquist has this place rigged to self-destruct.
“Scuttle sequence initiated. One minute, forty-two seconds and counting.”
When the countdown reaches zero, AMOS goes up like a Roman candle.
“So where are you taking us?”
Hindquist’s private elevator. If it hasn’t been disabled, it’ll take us up to the lobby, Genie panted.
“And if it’s disabled?”
We’ll have about one minute left to live.
“Couldn’t we go up by the ramp?”
I wouldn’t want to be mingling with those guards right now. Not all of them have thrown down their arms and most of them are too stupid to know there’s no point in killing us any more. Besides, if big people are crawling all over one another to get out that way, four dogs and one kid don’t stand a chance.
“What about Hindquist?”
Genie went silent for a moment. Let’s concentrate on saving our own butts and let Mr. America North take care of his, she said.
She’s hiding something, Bertrand thought. Why? Not that he didn’t trust Genie. She’d risked her life for them and been the true mastermind behind the plot that had brought Hindquist down. Their scheme would have ended in disaster if it hadn’t been for her.
There it is, she said.
“Scuttle sequence initiated. One minute, thirty seconds and counting.”
When we get to the door punch the number 2011 into the combination pad, Genie told Bertrand.
“2011?”
As in 2011 Common Era, the ‘Year of Turmoil’ according to the gospel of the Global Council. Plagues, wars, famine . . . the conditions dictatorships thrive in, dictatorships linked through the Council into one New World Order.
“That’s insane!”
So’s all this, Genie said as they pulled up at the elevator doors. Now punch in the number.
“Scuttle sequence initiated. One minute, twenty seconds and counting.”
Bertrand jabbed at the keypad, his fingers shaking. 2-0-1-1.
“Thank you,” the speaker beneath the keypad murmured. “AMOS is in a state of high alert. Please enter the extra sequence for Code Red situations.”
The what? Genie gulped.
You don’t know it? Einstein croaked.
“Scuttle sequence initiated. One minute, ten seconds and counting.”
No, I don’t, Genie snapped.
“What are we going to do?”
Guess, Genie answered resolutely.
Oh, great! Cap groaned.
No! I know what it is! Genie shouted. It’s ‘turmoil’: T-U-R-M-O-I-L . . .
“Scuttle sequence initiated . . . ”
Shut up! Cap roared at the tinny voice.
T is 8. Punch in 8, Genie ordered. U is 8; R,7; M,6; O,6; I,4; L,5.
“Scuttle sequence initiated. Fifty seconds and counting.”
Bertrand hesitated a moment, then punched in the final number. A second passed, the longest second imaginable, then the elevator doors rumbled open.
In! In! Genie shouted over the cheers of the others. Push Lobby, Bertrand, and let’s get out of here.
The doors rumbled shut again and the elevator lurched upward.
For a hi-tech company, you’d think Mr. H could have chosen a faster hoist, Einstein complained. This thing makes a three-toed sloth look like lightening on legs.
Come on! Cap urged.
“Scuttle sequence initiated. Thirty seconds and counting.”
At last the elevator jolted to a stop and the doors opened into a darkened lobby. They dashed across the tiled floor, only to discover the plate glass doors locked.
Stand back! Genie yelled. When they had all moved behind her, she fired, blowing out the doors.
“Scuttle sequence initiated . . . ”
None of them stuck around to hear the next lethal increment. They stumbled out into the landscaped plaza, then ran as fast as they could away from the doomed building. Bertrand yelled at the others to get away, but they didn’t need encouragement. In fact he was the laggard, having only two legs to retreat on instead of four. To his right the AMOS parking lot teemed with guards and workers, all stampeding to get away. The parking lot entrance was blocked by a police cruiser, its lights flashing.
“Atta girl, Airee!” Bertrand whooped.
Karump! The ground heaved underfoot and a shockwave flattened him. He felt like he’d been run over by a linebacker for the B.C. Lions. Bertrand twisted round just in time to see the AMOS building collapse in on itself, a slow-motion disintegration, accompanied by the groans of twisting metal and the crash of toppling concrete.
“My God!” he gasped, watching the death throes of Hindquist’s empire. “Oh my God!”
As soon as she’d called 911, Ariel skirted around the parking lot, making for the front of the building. Pandemonium had broken loose, employees spilling out of the shipping room door and off the loading dock. The truck that had been parked there suddenly lurched forward, weaving dangerously through the fleeing crowd. Then the police arrived, sirens whooping and lights flashing.
Not wanting to be mistaken for a threat, Ariel slid the guard’s confiscated rifle under a hedge and kept running. There was no sign of Bertrand or the others amid the fleeing herd, and with every second her fears intensified. “Come on!” she pleaded. “Where are you guys?”
She’d barely finished uttering the words when the plate glass entrance of the AMOS building blew out, showering the plaza with glass. Einstein, Blizzard, Breeze, Cap, and Bertrand burst out of the building, joining the others in the wild exodus. Ariel jumped up and waved. “Over here!” she hollered. “Over here!” But they didn’t seem to notice her, so intent were they on escaping whatever pursued them. “They’re being chased,” she thought, ducking into the hedge.
A policeman at the parking lot entrance had the same idea. Crouching behind his cruiser, he pointed his gun at the entrance. A second later, Genie emerged. Ariel’s heart convulsed. She knew exactly what was going to happen: the policeman had just seen four dogs and a child flee the AMOS lobby. Now he was confronted with the weirdest apparition he’d had ever seen: a dog wearing a vest, bristling with weapons and a helmet that might have been taken from a Star Trek set.
“No!” Ariel screamed. “Don’t shoot! She’s our friend!”
Ariel didn’t know if her cry even registered with the constable. But he did hesitate for a millisecond and before he could get a bead on Genie the SMART dog wheeled and dodged acros
s the front lawn.
Pop! Pop! Pop! The constable’s pistol flashed, but Genie had already darted out of range.
Later Ariel would realize something else: Genie could easily have killed the police officer, but she could not fire on an innocent man.
Any more thoughts Ariel might have had at the time were blown away by an invisible fist that slammed into her chest.
She staggered to her knees just in time to watch the AMOS building implode. But even as the roar of Hindquist’s downfall rang in her ears, Ariel’s thoughts returned to Genie. “Where’s she going?” she cried.
She was on her feet, running. She needed to find the others to tell them about Genie and get help because she was certain the terrors of that night had not ended.
A billowing wall of dust engulfed Bertrand. Choking, eyes stinging, he staggered to his feet. The emergency lights of the police cruiser flashed in the smoke with an eerie incandescence, like coloured lightning inside a cloud. Shadowy figures darted here and there through the murk. It was as if hell had cracked open, all its deformed inmates rushing out at once.
“Birdie!” Ariel’s voice reached him through the haze.
“Birdman, where the heck are you?”
“Over here!” he answered.
“Where?”
“Here!”
At last she stumbled out of the flashing fog, a spectre coated in dust. Her hair had gone prematurely grey, her skin ashen; she looked like a statue that had broken free of its pedestal and taken to wandering the earth. Bertrand laughed, which made the statue frown, which made him laugh even harder.
“Come on!” she urged.
He stopped laughing. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.
“Genie. She’s taken off down the front of the building. The cops shot at her, but I think she was headed in that direction anyway. She’s after Hindquist, Bertrand. I know it. Where’s Einstein?”
Right here, the SMART dog answered.
“Let’s go,” Bertrand said, setting off at a gallop, skirting the rubble-filled plaza and front lawn of AMOS. “Where do you think she’s gone?” he asked, panting.
“Find Hindquist and we’ll find Genie, I’m sure of it,” Ariel said.