Two of the other keepers followed. Lim held the gate open for them as they hurried through. Too late he realized Kristin was not among them.
A sudden scream brought them all back, crowding into the gate opening, looking toward the barn. A wolf bitch darted through the open door. Lim knew the animal could only have escaped if Kristin had let it out. Foolish woman—she’d stayed behind to free the surrogates.
A moment later Kristin stumbled outside, bright red spatters darkening her khaki blouse. Lim moved to help her but was hauled back by the other keepers as one of the Bengal tigers lunged through the barn door, confused by the fire, the smell of blood. It slammed into Kristin, more by accident than any purposeful thought. Pure reflex drove it to bury its fangs in her neck, dragging her to the ground with its weight. It shook her once, then tossed her limp body aside before bounding toward the keepers—the only direction where the fire had yet to spread.
As one, the keepers fled back through the gate, slammed it shut and shot the lock only seconds before they heard the scrabble of claws on the other side.
Their hearts were still pounding when the first of the flames engulfed the far side of the nursery. Panicking mothers, trapped in their pens, roared in terror.
Lim wasn’t going to wait around to hear the screams of the dying. “Tell security what happened,” he instructed an ashen-faced Sandy as he jogged off.
“Where are you going?”
“Sector C.”
Chapter Forty-Six
“WHERE THE HELL IS THE FIRE department?” Walt slammed his palm against the door jamb as he watched the wildfire, unabated, engulf the last fence between it and the research building. Showers of sparks danced off the spluttering poles and leapt to their deaths as the pulsating lawn sprinklers struggled to keep the flames from the labs.
“Still 20 minutes out the last time I spoke to the dispatcher.” The security chief had made his way to Walt, taking up a position to better assess if—and when—the evacuation orders needed to be given.
“What about the museum?”
“Not directly threatened yet.”
“I want someone there when the fire trucks come to stress the importance of no water damage inside the building. Might as well let the fire have it if it comes to that.”
An exaggeration, but Sam understood Walt’s point. “Helen has a handful of people stationed there with her. They’re ready to load up a couple of the saber-tooths and dire wolves if they have to. That’s about all that’ll fit in SUVs. If we had another truck—”
“Yeah, we’d already be—damn it!” Concentrated creosote in one of the fence posts fueled a resurgence in the frontline flames. Flares jumped across the soggy grass, landing on the fire retardant roof where they sizzled on the wetted shingles. Another burst followed and a section of exposed trim caught the brunt.
The determined maintenance man hurried around, training the spray from the garden hose onto the flames. They leapt again, and a second section of trim caught and blazed as another surge from the fence line arrowed for a gable with its grated roof vent.
“Don’t let it get inside!” Walt raced out and grabbed the nozzle from the maintenance man’s startled hands. Yanking the length of hose behind him he pointed the gush of water toward the gable. The flames along the outside of the grate quickly died. Walt turned to hand the hose back to the man when the security chief gave a cry.
“The attic!”
Behind the grate, a dim orange glow flickered. Over the sound of the hose and sprinklers came a muffled boom as the first of the insulation caught fire.
More flames twined around the vulnerable eaves as the wildfire pressed in over the fence line, the single garden hose no longer an effective defense. The battle line had been breached and without more resources retreat was now the only option.
Sam tapped out a broadcast message: Evacuate NOW! Then he ran inside and pulled the alarm.
Walt shoved the hose back into the maintenance man’s hands and ran for the building.
Carts piled with equipment, samples and cages of mice rattled through the hallways. Personnel ran for the parking garage to retrieve their vehicles, jamming the tiny parking lot as they loaded ten years of research into car trunks and the backs of SUVs.
Smoke curled out of attic vents, haloing the building in a mist of gray. In the light breeze, the smoke from the wildfire towering nearby settled close, spreading out and up like fog rolling in from the sea. Employees loading their vehicles coughed into their sleeves.
One by one, cars and SUVs, crammed full, sped off for the safety of their homes.
Inside the facility, fire crackled overhead behind the ceiling, building in intensity. When the gable where it entered finally burned through, the flames roared with renewed life in the sudden draft of air that rushed through the attic. In the resultant blast of heat, insulation crisped and ceiling tiles melted. Flames licked down walls, igniting chair pads and laminates. Smoke billowed into sensors in the ceiling and set off the sprinklers.
Caught in the spray, Dr. Volkov scowled, first at having to protect the last of the sensitive equipment he was rolling outside, then at the feeble force of the water coming from the spray jets. With the outside sprinklers and hoses on full blast, the pipes from the well could only handle so much more. Even at that the pipes themselves were being compromised as sections of ceiling gave way and the support system began to collapse.
Dr. Volkov stood in the empty hallway and fumbled in the deep pockets of his lab coat for the access badge he was entrusted with. The badge programmed to open cabinets housing sensitive experiments and to open drawers hiding confidential papers. And recently programmed to control the supply room door in front of him. The muffled shouts and banging from inside spurred his decision. He glanced at the camera hanging in the corner of the ceiling. The steady green light told him it was still working. He was fairly sure no one was in the security room monitoring it, but he didn’t know if it was simply a web cam or if there was a disc inside dutifully recording the mutiny he was about to commit. Not that it much mattered. Tomorrow—if there was a Triple E left—he’d be done with it. And with Walt.
He waved the badge in front of the sensor and clicked open the door.
Chapter Forty-Seven
LIM CHIOU SPED AROUND THE OUTSIDE of the compound in a commandeered 4-wheeler runabout from the Triple E maintenance shed. Creosote-laden smoke wisped up from the stockade fence on the far west side. Or rather, what was left of the fence that ran for a mile and more. Here, where the fire started, the flames themselves were dying, leaving behind blackened posts still pouring smoke from their interiors. The compromised fence still stood in theory, but many of the posts had been reduced to stumps and others were mere husks of ash barely holding their shape and ready to crumble with the least provocation.
The thunder of hooves that rocked the ground as Lim braked to a stop told him that provocation was going to be considerably more than was necessary to compromise the fence. The terrified animals were looking for any means of escape. Over the jagged stumps of posts Lim could see great shaggy shoulders pacing along the fence line. At one point where a section of posts had burned down to within eight feet of the ground, one of the mammoths swung its head over the jagged tops, its small ears strained forward, its trunk questing toward the prairie beyond. Its eyes locked on freedom.
Lim jumped from the runabout and ran toward the mammoth, waving his arms and shouting, hoping to drive the beast back. He had about as much effect as a yapping Chihuahua on a Brahma bull. A nuisance, maybe an annoyance. But not enough of one to keep the mammoth from rocking its weight against the posts, trying to bend them under it the way it bent large saplings to get to their tender twigs and leaves. Under its mass the weakened posts creaked with the strain. Another determined push and the posts snapped.
One of them cut a gash in the mammoth’s chest, but its tough skin, inches thick, minimized the wound. The megabeast scattered bits of broken lumber as it lunged through the sudden opening. Behind i
t crowded the other mammoths eager to be free. And behind them the three woolly rhinos awaited their chance to escape the flames that still burned across the compound.
Lim thought about the tranq gun but dismissed it. He could probably stop one of these animals, but he didn’t have enough darts to stop them all. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to kill 10 million dollars in inventory even if he could with the bull rifle he’d found in the runabout.
Besides, his annoying antics were now attracting the attention of the less-docile rhinos—and the big male plunging through the opening looked especially pissed. Most of the time simply freezing in place and allowing the rhino to lose interest was the best defense against these beasts. This wasn’t one of those times—and Lim instinctively knew it. He ran for the 4-wheeler and gunned it, taking off in a hard left turn as the rhino came charging toward him.
He shifted frantically through all five gears, pushing the older maintenance vehicle to its 60 mph limits. The young woolly rhino, just in its prime, was fast. For a moment it looked to be a real race, and Lim’s adrenal glands pumped in double time.
Mechanical acceleration, however, won out in the end, and the rhino slowed to a walk as Lim swung the runabout around in a wide arc so he was once again facing the herd of megabeasts now lumbering away. The social beasts wouldn’t get far fast with so many sick among them. With enough people and patience and enticements such as pumpkins and watermelons, the mammoths and woolly rhinos would be relatively easy to find and round up later.
What worried Lim now was how much damage had been done to the fencing farther up, beyond the range where the herd animals lived. Well-fed on stores of hay and market items, the herd had still over-grazed their range, leaving the natural prairie with ragged patches of short grasses checkerboarded with bare ground where vegetation had been taken out by its roots. The wildfire had to skip over these bare areas, and it was likely why all the herd had survived. Farther up, though, in the pens of the predators, the grasses would be tall and dry.
When Lim arrived at the first of these pens, the charred sections of inward-slanted posts eaten half to the ground by flames told a grim story. So much depended on how and where the fire had spread, though. Fire might well have overtaken all the animals before they made it back to the collapsing fences. But if the occupants had been able to dodge the flames, McKenzie County would soon have more to talk about than a handful of woolly mammoths and rhinos on the run.
Lim tallied the numbers in his head. After the hunters had taken their trophies yesterday, and not counting the exotics in Sectors A and B he had yet to check, that left eight dire wolves, five short-faced bears, and four saber-tooth cats potentially on the loose. A little over 13.5 million dollars in predators. Nearly 24 million dollars total from Sector C alone.
He stared out across the empty plain and thumbed his phone. “Sam, we have a problem.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
MIKE SHOULDERED THE SUPPLY room door open as soon as Dr. Volkov cracked it, shoving the geneticist back into the hall. He took in the dripping sprinkler heads, the laden cart, the empty hall and the bedraggled man before shouting, “What the hell?”
“We’ve got to get out—now. Before the ceiling collapses.”
“Thank God!” Sylvia sidled past Mike, one night in the supply room bad enough, but with a fire imminent … “I thought we were going to be left in there.”
“You almost were.” The Russian’s voice was hard. He gestured with his head and they followed the cart to the exit. “Walt apparently wouldn’t mind you dead. We cannot let him or his guards see you. The main building and this one have been evacuated. A lot of people have already fled, but a few are still over at the museum, trying to protect it. After I put this load in, I only have room in my van for one of you. There’s a maintenance shed, though, on the other side of the parking garage. There’s usually a runabout there gassed and ready to use.”
“You go with him,” Mike told Sylvia, selfishly not wanting to be separated from Donna. The woman shot him a thankful look.
Dr. Volkov nodded through the glass door toward the parking lot where only his van was left. Mike’s SUV had apparently already been disposed of or had been enlisted to help evacuate supplies. “Get in the passenger seat and stay there,” he told Sylvia. “If anyone looks this way and you’re outside, they will not mistake those designer clothes for any of the staff. I’ll finish loading and we’ll get out of here.” He turned back to Mike and Donna. “Good luck.”
Donna gave him a grim smile. “Thanks.”
Mike watched Sylvia duck out the door and hurry to the van as Dr. Volkov followed with his cartload of drenched equipment. Hoping everyone else was already well away, he looked at Donna. “Ready?”
She nodded, and they trotted off together for the maintenance shed as the first ceiling tiles in the hallway crashed to the floor behind them.
Locked in the supply room, Mike had thought the fire was only confined to the research building. The thick smoke roiling over the compound and forcing its way into his lungs showed him otherwise and made it clear why the staff was evacuating. Glimpses of flames between buildings also told him the fire was advancing.
Three bays with rollup doors constituted the bulk of the maintenance shed. Two of the bays were open—and empty. Sweating in the early afternoon heat, they slipped into one of the open bays, looking toward the third. Weak daylight illuminated its contents: a riding lawn mower and some gas cans along with an assortment of weedeaters and blowers. Whatever vehicles had been housed there were long gone.
“Shit.”
Mike couldn’t have summed it up better. “There’s still the parking garage. Maybe something’s been left there. Any idea how to hotwire a car?”
“No. But I’ve always been a fan of trial and error.”
They were at the bay door when Mike heard frantic shouts over the roar of the coming fire. Two people standing between the burning research building and the parking garage pointed toward a large white tank near the back fence. A third person stood perilously close to the tank holding a garden hose spewing water in a sporadic, rather impotent manner, obviously trying to keep it wet in advance of the wall of flames heading for it.
For a moment Mike stared stupidly at the scene, knowing there was something vitally wrong but unable to think what it was.
Donna’s cry spurred him. “Propane!”
Rooted, unable to turn away, they watched in horror as the first of the flames caressed the tank. The man holding the hose dropped it and ran for the protection of the garage.
He made it halfway to the people still shouting encouragement to him over their shoulders as they raced for cover.
The explosion rocked the compound. It sucked the oxygen away and snuffed the fire for a hundred yards around it. Like a massive bomb, the tank blew apart, sending flaming shrapnel in all directions. The concussive force knocked Mike and Donna to the ground. Bits of flying metal rattled against the steel shed and a large shard buried itself in a work table along the far wall, setting the dry pine on fire.
Outside, the sound of a human shriek was abruptly cut off as chunks of shrapnel arrowed toward the garage, raining down on the three people caught in the open.
Donna scrambled to her feet in emergency mode. She’d only taken two steps, though, when a second explosion tore through the parking garage. The Triple E fuel depot vomited black smoke and flames, and it was only a moment before the handful of vehicles parked in the concrete bunker caught fire one by one, their gas tanks pop, pop, popping in the chaos.
The rolling fireball swept over the three bodies, no longer moving or shouting. Donna could feel her skin reddening from the heat of the firestreak that erupted in front of her not 30 yards away. The fire at her back along the workbench was quickly spreading, too, chewing through wood and rubber and heading relentlessly for the lawn equipment and gas cans.
With no other options left them, she and Mike ran.
Chapter Forty-Nine
U
PWIND.
Instinctively, that was the direction Mike and Donna went. The trees and bushes that had been planted around the compound for privacy served well to keep two small humans hidden as they put as much distance between themselves and Triple E as fast as they could.
They struck out north toward the distant buttes, staying away from the roadway, knowing with sinking hearts they had miles to go before they could hope to find help.
Once beyond the corporate plantings they slowed, gasping for breath, their skin glistening with sweat not just from the run but from being sucked out by the warm July sun. Donna staggered and Mike caught her elbow with a worried glance. With her, heat stroke wasn’t the only thing they had to worry about.
Recovering her footing, she shrugged him off with a small cry. At first he thought she was in pain until he saw that she was pointing eastward, to something in the distance. A vehicle? Had they been spotted? He twisted around and saw the handful of large heavy shapes lumbering across the prairie. Moving north, away from the fire, just as they were doing.
“Mammoths!” Mike’s inner editor snickered insanely at the paradox: how ludicrous yet matter-of-fact that sounded. One day he lived in a world without mammoths; the next he was watching them walk across the plains of North Dakota, casually identifying them by their bulk and humps and topknots. And if mammoths were outside the compound … “Do you think other animals escaped?” Mike was remembering the barn with the tigers and wolves and bears.
Donna looked at him with a hint of alarm on her face. “Let’s hope not.” But there was little in the way of conviction in her voice.
“No weapon, no phone … if we aren’t alone—” Mike peered about, half-expecting to see some mega-predator crouching in the grass.
“We’ve got to keep moving.” With more determination showing outside than she felt inside, Donna struck out parallel to the path the mammoths took.
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