Lockdown rl-1

by Sean Black

  ‘Sure thing.’

  Lock knelt down and pulled it from Brand’s boot. It came out with a sucking noise and a pulse of blood. He wiped down the blade and kept it in his hand.

  There were a number of questions that had been nagging away at Lock. Not just about Josh — he’d figured most of those out for himself — but about the presence of Mareta and her colleagues.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ Lock asked Brand with a jerk of his head.

  ‘Test subject. They need to try it out on human beings and she was the closest we could get.’

  The smartass answer earned Brand another high-voltage pulse from the taser.

  ‘That why she’s still alive?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘And you took Hulme’s son to make him think it was the animal rights people? Scare him back on board.’

  ‘Not my idea.’

  ‘What about Stokes?’

  ‘He got wind of the human trials. Some upstanding citizen in the company must have leaked it. He used it as leverage to broker the deal, but you know how much the company likes loose ends.’

  ‘Hulme know any of this?’ asked Lock.

  ‘Doubt it. He seemed pretty shocked when he figured who was replacing the monkeys.’ Brand glanced at Mareta, who was standing with her head tilted back, pinching her nose to staunch the bleeding.

  ‘So why a Chechen?’

  ‘Search me. Probably got scooped up in the Middle East. I thought we’d be getting mostly ragheads or Guantanamo Bay’s leavings, but the bleeding hearts have most of them accounted for.’

  ‘OK, Brand. How do we get out?’

  ‘I told you, Lock, you don’t. Right now, this place is locked down tighter than a gnat’s asshole. You get past our guys, there’ll be army on the perimeter.’

  ‘We have you.’

  ‘Big whoop. I’m as dispensable as you are. Soon as they get a look, they’ll light you up like a Christmas tree.’

  ‘Better take off that body armour then.’

  Mareta and Lock watched Brand closely as he stripped off. Lock, feeling slightly ungallant, took the extra padding of Brand’s clothes and put them over his own before slipping on the body armour, leaving the helmet off for now. He comforted himself with the fact that Mareta was the safest person among the three of them. Her status as a trial subject ensured that.

  The radio chatter had fallen away. Lock turned up the volume and waited. Just as he was wondering if there’d been another change of channels there was a burst of static and Stafford’s voice crackled over the speaker. ‘Lock? You there?’

  Lock raised the walkie-talkie to his lips. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Is Brand alive?’

  ‘Everyone’s alive. For now.’

  ‘In five minutes the military will be here.’

  ‘The military?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Don’t drag them into this, Stafford. If anyone in the military knew what you’ve been doing, they’d drop you out of a helicopter over Tehran with a signed photo of Dick Cheney pinned to your shorts.’

  ‘Five minutes, Lock. I’ll kill everyone in that cell if I have to.’

  ‘Bullshit. You need the woman to make up the numbers.’

  Stafford didn’t reply, which said a whole lot.

  Lock turned to Mareta. ‘You’re the escape expert. What do we do now?’

  ‘We do this,’ said Mareta, slashing Brand’s throat.

  Fifty-nine

  Stafford stood at the end of the corridor, Brand’s Glock warm in his hand. Three doors down, Lock’s cell door opened and a broadly spherical object rolled out. It took a second for him to register what it was. The eyes blindfolded. The scalp shaved. A jagged wound snaking down the skull. It was Lock’s head. That crazy bitch had butchered Lock and tossed his head out into the corridor like a bowling ball.

  Stafford’s stomach lurched, and a two-hundred-dollar dinner spattered over five-hundred-dollar split-toe Harris brogues.

  A figure stepped from the cell, face obscured by his riot visor, pushing Mareta forward at knife point. Her face was a mess, her own hair matted slick with blood.

  ‘Well, screw me,’ Stafford said, gesturing for the two guards with him to open the door. ‘He did it.’

  The figure gave Mareta another shove. Hard. The momentum carried her through the open door and into the two guards. They scrambled to get a grip of her.

  As they did so, the figure reached out a hand and took the Glock from Stafford. Awed, Stafford didn’t even try to stop him.

  ‘You did it, Brand! You did it!’

  The figure pointed the gun at his head.

  Stafford stumbled over his words. ‘Listen, there’s no need to be sore. I knew you would. Lock was never any match for you.’

  The visor tilted up.

  ‘That so?’ said Lock, grabbing Stafford and pressing the barrel of the Glock into his temple.

  A scream went up from one of the two guards as Mareta fastened on to him, trying to prise away his throat protector. He raised his hand to ward her off and she bit down on it. As his sidearm clattered to the floor, Mareta’s other hand, which held the knife, crept towards the man’s face, ferreting out a gap in his body armour and driving home the point of the knife straight into his carotid artery. A jet of blood pulsed out irregularly and ran thick down the wall as his partner tried to wrestle her off.

  Lock shoved Stafford out of the way, levelled the Glock downwards, and picked his spot as best he could using iron sights at close range. He squeezed off a single round into Mareta’s leg. She released her grip, her hand reaching down to where she’d been shot. The uninjured guard pulled her to the floor, wresting the knife from her and jamming his knee into her back.

  A second too late, Lock caught sight of Stafford reaching down to retrieve the dying guard’s sidearm. He spun round, levelled his Glock at Stafford, but not before the guard kneeling on top of Mareta had managed to point his weapon straight at Lock’s unprotected face.

  He sensed the red dot of a laser sight tracing a pattern from his mouth to his face and up to a spot directly between his eyes. Slowly, he took his finger from the trigger of the Glock and laid it gently on the floor.

  Sixty

  In the hospital block, Lock was staked out on a gurney. Across the room, Mareta was similarly restrained, her left leg a bloodied mess. Richard Hulme, who’d been drafted in as a surrogate ER physician, stood over her.

  ‘How’d this happen?’ he asked Stafford, who was pacing the room.

  ‘Ask the Lone Ranger over there,’ Stafford said, gesturing towards Lock.

  Lock rested his chin on his chest. His only real injuries were cuts and bruises sustained during the beating he’d taken after he’d put down the Glock. All the guards had been members of Brand’s detail. Grief, in this case, manifested itself in the form of kicking and punching Lock all the way to the medical block.

  But, Lock had noted as he was taking his beating, they hadn’t laid a finger on Mareta. She was a woman. She was injured. But he didn’t think that would have stopped them. They needed her. And now, he hoped, they’d need him just enough to keep him alive for a while longer.

  ‘Well, the good news is I doubt it’ll require amputation,’ Richard said. ‘But we need to get her to a proper emergency facility as soon as we can.’

  ‘No can do,’ Stafford said. ‘You’ll have to patch her up here. We can get you whatever you need.’

  ‘It’s been twenty years since I went near anything like this.’

  ‘Good opportunity to brush up on your skills then.’

  ‘Dad!’

  Josh stood in the doorway of the room, flanked by two guards.

  ‘Sorry,’ one of them said as the other tried to hustle Josh back out of the room. ‘All we heard was that Dr Hulme was in here.’

  Josh broke away from their grip and rushed to his father. ‘What’s wrong with those people?’ he asked, staring at Lock and Mareta over his father’s shoulder.

>   ‘They had an accident. But don’t worry, Daddy’s going to make it all better. Now, why don’t you go back to your room?’

  One of the guards came over to lead him out.

  ‘Come on, son.’

  ‘No, let him stay,’ Stafford interrupted.

  Lock watched as Josh shuttled his gaze between his father and Stafford, unsure who to obey. It was the first time he had seen the boy in anything other than photographs. The anger he felt that he’d been used as a pawn in this whole thing by Stafford acted like an opiate to dull his pain. Damn. He should have shot him when he had the chance and been done with it.

  Stafford turned his attention back to Mareta, and grimaced at her leg wound. ‘She still good to go for the trial?’ he asked Richard.

  ‘Are you out of your mind? Of course not.’

  ‘You couldn’t juggle the results?’

  ‘Wait a second. One minute you want me to sign off, now you want me to fake them?’

  ‘You’re right. But it still leaves us one short. We’ll have to find someone else to take her place.’

  Lock watched as Stafford’s gaze settled on Josh.

  ‘I wonder if there’d be any clinical benefit in seeing how effective the vaccine is with a different age group?’ Stafford mused.

  Richard placed himself between Stafford and his son. ‘You can go to hell, Stafford.’

  Lock strained to lift his head. ‘You can use me.’

  Sixty-one

  Carrie full-screened the RealPlayer window on her computer. The screen was black, save for a time/date stamp in the lower left corner. If it was accurate, the tape had been shot at ten minutes to midnight, a month before Gray Stokes had been shot outside Meditech.

  White text rolled up the screen. Someone had taken their time putting this together. Carrie pulled a yellow legal pad from a drawer and jotted down what it said.

  1st PHASE TRIAL OF DH-741

  MEDITECH ANIMAL TESTING ROOM

  ANIMAL TRIAL SUBJECT REACTION

  POST-VACCINATION FILOVIRUS EXPOSURE

  As the text scrolled off screen there was an abrupt cut to video footage — shaky, handheld, snatched. Grey metal filled the frame. A slow zoom out revealed the grey as the bar of a cage. It was joined by another bar, then Carrie could make out a brown rhesus monkey staring out. The monkey’s hands gripped the bars, its mouth opened wider than seemed possible. It screamed. Blood-red tears seeped from its eyes. It shook the bars of the cage.

  The camera panned across, picking up its neighbour banging its head against the bars, simultaneously clawing at its eyes with its fingers. Screams came from all sides.

  In the cage next to that another rhesus writhed. Its back arched and fell, as if a strong electric current was being passed through it. Near-human features contorted in pain. Then it arched once more, fell back, and didn’t move.

  The person shooting the footage moved along the line. One dead or dying animal after another.

  There was the clank of a heavy door closing and someone walking in.

  ‘Dr Hulme?’

  Then the screen went black.

  Sixty-two

  Back in the cell, Lock tried to doze, but sleep was made all but impossible by leg irons, cuffs, an aching body and a bad case of buyer’s remorse.

  He’d made the decision to shoot Mareta in the heat of the moment, rationalizing that she wasn’t the best thing to be unleashed on an unsuspecting American public, but not having the guts or the heart to kill a woman. Shooting her kept them both alive, and bought him time, although for what? It had been his best, probably only chance of escape, and he’d screwed it up royally. The monkey might be dead, but the organ grinder was very much alive. And he guessed Mareta wasn’t best pleased either.

  The cell door opened unexpectedly and two guards in riot gear stepped inside.

  ‘Relax. I’m not about to throw down,’ Lock said, rolling over on to his side. ‘Although I may throw up.’

  They pulled him to his feet and dragged him from the cell. He waited for the punches and kicks to start again but none came.

  The gate slid open at the end of the corridor and they marched him through and out of the building. The watery low winter sun hurt his eyes as they led him across open ground to the medical block. Here there were more gates, more security points to pass through.

  Eventually, they reached a room that Lock vaguely remembered passing on his way with Mareta to the medical area a few hours earlier. There were no gurneys inside, just an examination couch, a desk and a chair. Richard Hulme sat behind the desk.

  The guards lifted Lock up on to the couch.

  ‘I’ll be quite safe,’ said Richard.

  The guards didn’t budge. ‘Sorry, Dr Hulme, we have our orders.’

  Lock wondered how much either guard knew about what had happened in the lead-up to his appearance in Mareta’s cell. He doubted Brand would have trusted all but his closest confidants with the knowledge of Josh’s kidnapping, or Lock’s role in trying to track him down.

  ‘He’s fully restrained,’ Richard shot back.

  ‘Like we just said, we’re here to ensure your safety,’ the second guard replied.

  ‘And I appreciate it. And if you get your rocks off seeing me giving a grown man a full medical, including a prostate check, that’s your business.’

  ‘Prostate?’ said the first guard.

  ‘He’s going to shove his finger up my ass,’ replied Lock.

  The two guards traded a look.

  ‘He is in restraints,’ the second guard said, not relishing the thought of what was going to be happening in the room. ‘OK, we’ll be right outside, but leave the door open. If it closes we’ll be coming through it.’

  Once they were alone, Richard began the examination, starting with a visual assessment. ‘You took a real beating.’

  ‘I’ve taken worse,’ Lock lied.

  Richard leaned in closer as he checked Lock’s ears for signs of bleeding. ‘You think there’s a camera on us?’ he whispered. Then he drew back. ‘Are you experiencing any pain?’

  ‘I think that’s safe to assume,’ Lock said. ‘But as long as it’s low level, I think I’ll be OK.’

  Richard took the hint and dropped his voice as he continued the examination. ‘Listen, do you know the procedure for this test?’

  Lock shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘In your case, yes. I’m going to give you a placebo but I want you to act as if you’re having a violent reaction right after I give it to you.’ He raised his voice again. ‘Could you raise your arms for me?’

  ‘What about the others? Are you going to test them too?’ Lock asked as Richard placed a stethoscope against his back.

  ‘I’m hoping to test you first.’

  ‘It’s too risky. Especially now they’ve got Josh here.’

  ‘They can’t blame me if the vaccine doesn’t work.’

  ‘You don’t think it’ll work?’

  ‘No, I think it will, but I’m not going to play God with these people no matter who they are.’

  ‘You might not have a choice, Dr Hulme.’

  Sixty-three

  Josh lay on the bed reading a comic, one for boys his age. Not like that horrible album. He’d already worked out that if he looked at enough other stuff he could push those pictures out of his brain. But he couldn’t seem to get rid of the smell of the place where he’d been kept. It was everywhere.

  He glanced up as his dad walked into the room. ‘What was wrong with that lady?’

  ‘She got hurt in an accident.’

  ‘It looked like she’d been shot.’

  ‘She had. But like I said, it was an accident. That’s why you should never pick up a gun if you see one.’

  ‘Had she been bad?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s not why she got shot.’

  ‘Was Natalya bad?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘A little bit?’ Josh looked up at his father, registering how tired he looked.

>   ‘She trusted the wrong person, that’s all.’

  *

  Mareta was sleeping when Richard arrived to check on her, her breathing slow but insistent. He reached out for her hand, shackled to the bed. Her fingers folded into his as she woke. Her hand felt soft and warm.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  Her pupils dilated and contracted, struggling to find focus through a curtain of morphine. ‘Yani?’

  Was Yani her husband? Her son?

  ‘No, it’s Dr Hulme. I came to check on you.’

  ‘My leg, did you save it?’

  ‘Yes, but we need to get you to a proper hospital.’

  ‘You know what I did to that man?’

  Richard had caught snatches from the guards of how Brand met his end. Each retelling was more gruesome than the last. ‘It’s not my job to judge you,’ he said.

  ‘I had to do it,’ she whispered. ‘He was going to kill me. I had no choice.’

  He studied her face, the olive skin, the calm brown eyes, the high cheekbones. ‘Are you comfortable? Is there anything I can get you?’

  ‘Maybe some water.’

  Richard crossed to a sink at the far end of the room and filled a beaker from the tap. He helped her sit up and put the beaker to her lips. She took tiny sips then sank back into the pillows.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Then she tried to reach out for his hand, the cuffs rattling against the bed frame. The tips of her fingers traced a circle on his palm.

  ‘Help me. If I stay here, I’ll die.’

  Sixty-four

  Cuffed and shackled, Lock was wheeled through an airlock and into the testing room. Red air hoses hung from the ceiling at intervals of six feet. The two bio-suited guards who’d brought him in made a final check on the restraints.

  Lock lifted his head in time to see them go back through into the airlock. Another man in a bio-suit was coming the other way. On his back was a respirator. Richard Hulme looked like the world’s most unlikely astronaut.