As soon as I had a grip I put up a foot against the opposite wall, pushing off of it like a gymnast. I threw my whole weight back through the doorway into the lab, dragging my wounded teammate with it and out of the line of fire. I screamed with effort and pain. My leg was filled with liquid fire and my muscles burned. I scrabbled on the floor, dragging him backward like I was in a strongman competition. I frantically hauled and lifted and jerked almost four hundred pounds of gear and bloody dying man back behind a heavy lab bench. I dropped him, popped the quick-release on my ruck and pulled out my aid bag; I went to work, ignoring my own wounds and my suddenly acute need for food.
Zeke took the door position and yelled on the net, “Hostile, hostile, southwest corner room. Man down, man down. Skull, put a few rounds through the corner of the building.”
I immediately heard heavy, measured popping sounds begin, metallic and deadly, 7.62 rounds punching through the thin lab walls. I hoped he knew where he was aiming.
I glanced up over the bleeding mess to meet Elise’s eyes, kneeling there. She looked horrified.
I pulled out Gramps’ blade and she shrank back, but I ignored her and cut the body armor off of Larry. The knife sliced through the armor’s straps and seams and in ten seconds I had his shell off in pieces. My hands moved with the practiced speed of my younger days as I slid the pig-sticker back into its sheath and ran my hands over his body, searching for the trauma in his flesh. I would have to let the other three deal with the hostile if I was going to save Larry’s life.
The worst injury was a sucking chest wound, front and back penetration. It looked like a large-caliber full metal jacket round, maybe coated with something to defeat armor, .50 caliber or .44 magnum. I cursed all fans of big-bore handguns as I grabbed Elise’s bare hand and put it against the bloody hole in his chest.
“Pressure, hard, HERE.”
I rolled him onto his side to keep the fluid buildup in his lungs under control. Air wheezed in and out of the puncture in his back as his body struggled for breath. I needed to seal that up.
By this time Zeke was squeezing off single shots left-handed in the doorway, firing down the corridor to the right, suppressing the hostile. With part of my mind I heard the electric-chainsaw sound of Spooky’s P90, slim 5.7mm rounds shredding in short bursts like hail drumming on a steel rooftop. Then I heard a flash-bang go off, and Zeke moved out into the corridor. He and Spooky assaulted the shooter.
I had unrolled my aid bag and was reaching for the tools of my trade when Elise leaned over and planted her mouth full on Larry’s.
No time for smooching and no need for mouth-to-mouth ran through my head unbidden. My fingers slowed down as my disbelieving brain watched her lay the mother of all French kisses on Larry, like a drunk chick at a Saturday night meet-market. The uncomprehending part of me was suddenly jealous. I heard the snake giggle from somewhere deep inside.
She lifted her head, coughing and retching, and I saw her expression, a mixture of horror and hope, as she wiped her mouth out with the sleeve of her lab coat and stared down at Larry.
Was this an attempt to transfer the XH to Larry? It was the only thing that made sense.
I had to put that question on hold along with many others as a tall cabinet in the corner behind her swung inward. It had hidden a door from the next room. A man stood thus revealed, a scarred man with a very, very large handgun in a shooter’s grip. He fired two more quick shots back into the room he was leaving and then turned toward us.
I dropped my right hand to my thigh where my trusty XD was holstered, drew and fired, double tap. Unfortunately the hard rubber bullets I had loaded with stung him but didn’t put him down. My experiment had betrayed me, and I frantically pulled the trigger over and over, peppering him with nonlethal rounds at close range. I saw one hit his face and tear a hole in his cheek, but the ones that bounced off his arms and chest did little but annoy him.
The XD’s slide locked open and I was out of ammo.
The gunman, who had been shielding his face with his raised arms, began to bring his weapon back to shooting position. I released my pistol, snapped my hand to the blade on my calf. I drew the knife with my fingertips and in one motion extended my hand with a flip of the wrist. It was poor technique but he was very close, less than ten feet away. Gramps’ legacy turned end for end once. The razor-sharp tip of the blade punched right through the meaty part of his left forearm, between the radius and ulna.
Unfortunately he was right-handed. He gritted his teeth and his right hand kept swinging that hand cannon in our direction, and I knew this was going to hurt. I prayed for God to save me and the XH to save me and surged to my feet to rush him.
But it was neither God nor XH, it was my own angel that saved me. Elise was closer and wasn’t carrying a load of gear. She bounced up and stepped in front of that damned murdering gunman and I saw the explosion as the first round blasted through her shoulder upward, a spray of red that covered me in a fine mist. The bullet, slowed, thumped off my kevlar helmet, staggering me.
He fired the second and last round just as she got her hands on his weapon. It tore through her right upper arm, to plow into the wall somewhere off to our rear. Impossibly, she hung on to the big black automatic with a death-grip, preventing him from firing with her fingers jammed through the trigger guard, for just long enough.
What an amazing woman. If I wasn’t in love before, I sure was now.
He struck her weakly, once, with his wounded left arm, my knife still sticking out of it like some bizarre fashion accessory. Then I had him.
Without thought or planning my right hand had dropped to the pistol grip of the M4 hanging on its retractable sling and I lined it up between his eyes. I didn’t fire, though, as I would have a few days ago, before my conscience started acting up. Instead, I punched the weapon forward, driving the tip of the barrel into his forehead. I had to hit him once more before he finally slumped and let go of his gun, wheezing on the floor. I kicked it aside. Desert Eagle, like I had thought. I pulled Gramps’ blade out of his flesh, wiped it on his pants leg, and slid it back in its sheath.
Just then Zeke came through the same secret door. He took in the scene and pulled out his zip cuffs again.
“Double them,” I said, turning back to Larry. “He’s one tough son of a bitch.” I was worried about Elise but the triage medic in my head made me work on the wounded man first. Besides, she had the XH and had survived worse – worse that I had inflicted.
Zeke dragged the hog-tied hostile out of our way.
With the corner of my eye I saw Elise sitting on the floor bleeding, propped against another lab counter, both arms hanging flaccid. Zeke pushed his M4 back on his sling and knelt down to attend to her. I saw Skull appear in the lab doorway, having come to join the fight.
He looked disappointed, until Zeke yelled, “You and Spooky clear the rest of the building.” He needn’t have shouted, since we were all still on the tactical link, but sometimes you do things in the heat of battle that don’t entirely make sense.
“You guys all right?” Vinny broke in. He had been pretty restrained until now. Of course we had emphasized the importance of no chatter, but he finally couldn’t help himself.
“Larry’s hit, but I think I got him.”
I lied. He was bleeding out fast. The delay dealing with the last hostile had cost him, and I was in a race for his life.
I made sure his airway was clear, got plugs into the chest wounds front and back, and wrapped him tight and quick, putting him on the wounded side again to keep him from drowning in his own fluids. Then I slapped pressure bandages on his other wounds, the new type with the infused clotting agent. A large-bore IV of saline was next, into a vein. I looked around for something to hang it on, and found Elise there.
She grabbed the bag with her left hand and held it high. Her wounds had closed fast, much faster than I had expected.
My own remembered need for food cramped my gut, almost doubling me over. I grabbed my
rucksack, opened one of the pockets to pull out a handful of protein bars. I ripped the wrapper off with bloody hands and held it out toward her face. Our eyes met, understanding passing between us.
She grabbed the bar with her free hand and stuffed it in her mouth, chewing furiously. She moaned with pleasure, a sound that reached me somewhere below the belt.
A part of me marveled at the human male’s ability to think about sex he hadn’t even had with someone he didn’t even know, even in the middle of a death struggle. Maybe because of the death struggle. I dropped the rest of the bars on the floor within reach, then went back to treating Larry.
I had got out another IV and was prepping whole blood when Elise asked, her mouth full, “You got dextrose?”
I nodded.
“That’s what he needs, more than blood.”
That made no sense to my training, but something about her look convinced me she knew what was she was talking about. So I prepped dextrose instead and slid it into his femoral vein, the biggest available vessel in the body and the way to get it in him fastest. It drained rapidly through the short tube as I held it up.
Elise fed me a chunk of protein bar. I gobbled it from her fingers. It was unbelievably sensual, like that first taste of water when you’re parched in the desert. She fed me another.
“More,” I gasped. I worked between bites.
“Give him more,” she said, gesturing at the dextrose.
“That would be too much. It could make him hyperglycemic. He could go into shock.”
“No,” she disagreed. “The Eden Plague is taking hold of him already. Look, his wounds are closing. He just needs to be fed. Give him more, now.” Her tone brooked no argument.
My mind’s eye flashed back to the bizarre lip-lock she had given Larry. That confirmed it. She had passed the XH, the…the Eden Plague she called it. Just like a bite, only a bit gentler. I was right, this stuff would put me out of a job. I didn’t have time to care about that right now. I switched out the empty for a full bag. “This is the last one of dextrose. Just whole blood and saline left.”
“Wait,” she said. She stuffed one more piece of protein bar into my mouth, then hung the saline drip on a drawer handle next to her. Standing up, she ran to the other side of the big laboratory, rummaging in a glass-fronted medical refrigerator. Larry looked like he was stabilized, breathing easier and not bleeding much.
She came back with four one-liter IV bags of something nonstandard, a pale pink liquid I didn’t recognize. It had ‘NS’ handwritten on it in black marker. “It’s a nutrient solution they use for the primates, when they do tests. It’s better than dextrose. It’s IV food in a bag. Only for Eden Plague carriers.”
I waited for the last of the dextrose to drain, then switched the bags. The pink stuff started down the tube, and we knelt there, watching him. After a moment I felt her staring at me. I looked up into her shining blue eyes, confident for the moment that the Eden Plague was doing its work. Thank you, I mouthed to her silently.
She blushed.
“Larry’s gonna make it,” I said over the link, my voice hoarse. “Anyone else need medical attention?”
“Neg.”
“Negative.”
“No.”
“Excellent.” Because I wanted to keep staring into those baby blues. I wanted to do it forever.
-13-
I opened up an MRE, Meal Ready-to-Eat standard field ration, started sharing it between us. It was twelve hundred calories in a package about the size of a bag of potato chips.
Zeke gave Vinny a summary situation report, then came over to the rest of us. By then everyone was gathered around Larry, who seemed to be out of danger.
I thought about giving him a dose of morphine but decided against it. If Elise could deal with the pain of being shot, Larry could too.
“We have to extract,” said Zeke urgently. “That last bastard had a radio and a phone in the security room there. No doubt he made some kind of a call. If they are brave and stupid they’ll react with their helo. If they are smarter, they will get together something we can’t handle. Either way, we don’t wanna hang around. Larry, can you move?”
His eyes were open by then. He opened his mouth, coughed, and said, “Yeah, I think so. Hey, pretty lady.”
Elise pressed her lips together in a ghost of a smile.
We helped him to his feet, leaving the shreds of his armor and most of his clothing in a bloody heap there. I handed him an MRE, then opened another one. Mmmm, chicken a la king. I could have eaten raw chicken at this point. I laughed to myself. Actually yes, I could. Salmonella was no threat anymore.
Skull dragged in the hog-tied guy we had caught sleeping, slung him next to the other one. “What about these two?” he asked, gesturing at the immobilized men on the floor.
Spooky walked over to them with his P90 aimed.
“No!” I yelled.
“Shut up,” warned Skull. He swung his HK my direction, more or less. “It’s not your call.”
I stood up, stepped up to Skull. My forward motion stopped with the flash suppressor of his HK in my chest. One twitch of his finger and I might be dead. I wasn’t at all sure my armor could stop a high-powered rifle bullet at point-blank range. Our eyes locked.
“I’m making it my call. This guy’s not the enemy, he’s just doing a job.” I reached up to grasp the barrel with my left hand, shoved it aside. I stared him down.
“They almost killed Larry,” grated Skull, his eyes cold and fixed.
“But they didn’t. And we saved his life. Nothing to avenge.” I stepped into Skull, put my hand on his chest, pushing him inexorably back. He stumbled, and I shoved his skinny frame. He sprawled on his back. I pointed a finger at him. “Next time you aim a weapon at me, you better shoot me, or I’ll shove it up your ass.”
Skull spread his hands, backing down for the moment. I could tell it wasn’t over between us.
“He’s right,” rumbled Zeke, reluctantly. I hoped he meant me. “Nobody kills anybody if we don’t need to.”
I let my breath out with relief.
“Time to get out. Listen, you,” Zeke poked the guy from the bunkroom, “tell your masters that we got the healing stuff. If they want it kept under control for a while longer, they’ll stop coming after us. Otherwise, maybe we’ll just release it into the water supply. Or start biting people.”
Elise shook her head, started to say something.
I held up a hand to stop her. Tough guy was still out cold and bunkroom guy was blindfolded, and I didn’t want him to see Zeke or hear any commentary, because I knew Zeke was bluffing. Or I thought he was.
I also didn’t think the bluff would work. Governments, or government employees, generally don’t react well to blackmail. We had bloodied their noses, embarrassed them, stolen their secret formula, and the person or people behind the whole thing would want it back. The only question was, would he or she still try to do damage control, or would it be confession time, bump it up to higher authority and turn it into an official reaction by the whole Agency or worse. I really didn’t want that.
“Sure wish we could destroy this lab,” I remarked. “That would slow them down a bit.”
Spooky said, “We could burn it. Best we can do. We must go.”
“Oh, I got something better,” answered Larry in a gravel voice. “I got claymores. And thermite. In the bag in the first closet.” Claymores were command-detonated explosive mines. Not ideal for blowing up buildings, but good enough as a field expedient. Thermite was a high-temperature incendiary that would melt its way through damned near anything.
Zeke nodded. “Excellent. Set them up. Then find the fire suppression system and turn it off. Skull, Spooky, get some flammables. Miss Wallis, are there records?”
She pointed at one wall, where several computers sat, with rows of disks and a humming commercial-grade hard drive.
I walked over, started dumping all the recordable data media and drives I could find into a pile onto t
he floor. “Make sure we pour some accelerant over here,” I said.
Elise came over to the computers, opening a drawer and reaching far into the back. She came up with something in her hand, something small, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. “Flash drive. It’s got a secret copy of almost all the work on it, just in case.”
In case of what, I wondered? I suppose in case of something like this.
“Take this and go over there.” She pointed toward the door.
I was puzzled, but complied, moving away.
She picked up a strange heavy device with a handle and a thick three-prong-plug cord on it. She plugged it in and flipped a switch. It started to hum with a noise that made my teeth hurt. “Electromagnet,” she said. “It’ll wipe everything.” She started running the thing over the computer cases and hard drives.
I saw now why she sent me and the precious flash drive away.
Skull came in with a five-gallon jerry can of diesel and started pouring it all over everything. The guy in the hood began to scream through the gagging tape when he smelled it. Probably thought we were going to burn him. Zeke dragged him outside.
Spooky kicked the tough guy, who was either still unconscious or shamming. “One of you strongman grab this one, please. I am not a weightlifter.”
I left Elise to her magnetic wiping and grabbed tough guy by a leg. I dragged him none too gently out into the parking lot and left him with bunkroom guy by the Jeep. It was quiet outside, except for a faint buzzing sound, like a weed-eater heard from two yards over.
Or a helo a few miles out. It was getting louder.
“We got company coming, fellas,”’ I said. “ETA maybe one or two minutes. I can hear a bird inbound.”
Zeke answered for everyone. “Roger. Rally at the ORP, go go go.”
The six of us streamed for the rally point, flames licking at the laboratory behind us. I heard two explosions inside, rattling the walls and spitting dust and debris out the doors. I guess Larry’s claymores and thermite had done their work.
Eden Plague - Latest Edition Page 32