by sara12356
Only it wasn’t a soldier on the other side, at least not the sort Andrew had been expecting. What stood before him in the infirmary didn’t even register as human at first in Andrew’s brain, and he shrank back, his arms drooping to his sides, holding the IV stand with limp-wristed impotence.
It was shaped like a man, upright and bipedal. From there, most other resemblance ended. Grotesquely deformed, its flesh seemed to have erupted, enormous overlapping tumors stacked thickly one atop the other, protruding from nearly every visible inch. So violently had these growths occurred, they had actually ripped through the skin in places, peeling it back in broad swaths, leaving behind panels of red, raw, exposed meat and tendons. Its facial features had nearly been obliterated by the disfiguring growths, and its bald scalp had split open and retracted, the skull bulging out on one side like something beneath had swelled to near bursting. What remained of its skin was slick with pus and blood, both of which oozed, greasy and glistening, from the lumps and cysts covering its form.
It was a mottled pair of fatigue pants and combat boots it wore that finally gave it away.
“Jesus Christ,” Andrew gasped, shocked, horrified. “O’Malley?”
When the deformed man in front of him moved his head, following the sound of Andrew’s voice, there was a moist, sickening, slippery sound, muscles and ligaments moving. Again he heard sniffing, canine-like and loud.
“Corporal O’Malley?” Andrew asked, his voice little more than a stunned, disbelieving croak. “Is that you?”
O’Malley stepped toward him, his heavy boots falling loudly against the floor, his right leg dragging behind him, as if injured or maimed.
“It’s Andrew Braddock,” Andrew said, obligingly stepping back, hoisting the IV stand again, leveling it protectively in front of him. “Remember? Just-Andrew.”
The rational part of his mind, usually so calm and collected, was nowhere to be found. In its place was something shrill and panic-stricken. What’s wrong with him? Jesus Christ, what happened to his skin?
“You’re sick,” he said, inching sideways, trying to ease his way behind a nearby cart and use it as a crude barrier between himself and O’Malley. “You…oh, God, you’re in bad shape, man. Let me go get Dr. Montgomery. She can help.”
O’Malley’s head whipped on his neck again, his entire body pivoting, squaring off in his direction. Baring his teeth in a vicious grin, he hissed like a cat, sending a spray of spittle flying from the loose skin of his lips.
He can’t see, Andrew realized. In Dani’s room earlier that night, he’d noticed how the nodules on O’Malley’s face had swelled around his eyes, nearly sealing them shut. It’s happened all the way, then, when those growths on his head spread. He’s tracking me, but not by sight—with his sense of smell, his ears.
If O’Malley couldn’t see, Andrew knew he might stand a chance of reaching the door, getting out of there without his notice. But when he took a step in that direction, O’Malley hissed again, aware enough of his footsteps to be alerted by the sound.
“Listen to me,” Andrew said. “Dani’s worried about you. She’s right down the hallway. Let me get her. Let me get Dr. Montgomery.”
He had no intention, of course, of bringing Dani anywhere near the grotesque thing now shambling in his direction. The shock alone at seeing what had happened to her friend would probably have killed her. But he had to say something, anything to try and reason with him.
It’s still O’Malley, Dani’s friend. He’s a good guy and he’s still in there somewhere, no matter what’s happening to his body. He has to be.
Because the alternative was too horrifying to even consider.
“You’re sick, Thomas. I just want to help you.” Without abandoning the IV stand, his only semblance of a weapon, Andrew shut up and stepped again toward the door, this time quietly enough to not attract O’Malley’s notice.
As he moved, O’Malley hunkered down to the ground, panning his head this way and that in a sweeping arc, uttering those loud snuffling sounds again. Morbidly curious, disgusted but fascinated, Andrew paused, watching. O’Malley’s movements were primitive, nearly bestial. Using his arms for forelegs, O’Malley scuttled forward, quick and spider-like, tracking Andrew to the cart, then pausing there, sniffing curiously.
He turned his face toward Andrew, and for a moment, Andrew could have sworn that he could see him somehow, that he knew who Andrew was.
“O’Malley?” he whispered. “Are you in there?”
O’Malley sprang at him, moving so fast, Andrew had no time to recoil or fight back. He barely even had time to cry out before O’Malley slammed into him, plowing him off his feet and sending him sprawling to the floor. His voice cut short in a breathless whoof! as the wind got knocked from his lungs and he smacked the back of his head against the tiles hard enough to leave him seeing spots of light twinkling in front of his eyes.
In a flash, O’Malley lunged at him, snapping his teeth directly at Andrew’s face. When he’d landed, Andrew had managed to wedge the IV pole between them laterally, and wrenched it up now in front of his face so the bite—meant for his head—sank instead around the metal shaft. O’Malley reared back, straddling Andrew, and shook his head like a Rottweiler shaking off a dousing of water, trying to wrestle the pole away.
Andrew swung the right side of the IV stand around, ripping it loose from O’Malley’s mouth and slamming the T-junction into his head. O’Malley fell sideways and Andrew scrambled backwards, flipping himself over, hurrying to his feet. He felt O’Malley’s hands slap and paw for purchase on his pant legs, his ankles, then slip away as he bolted for the infirmary door.
Though he reached it, he heard the thunder of footsteps in heavy pursuit, felt the thrumming in the floor beneath him as O’Malley approached, and he whirled, again swinging the IV stand. This time, O’Malley ducked around the blow and grabbed the shaft. He jerked against the pole, incredibly strong, and Andrew heard a sharp, metallic snap as it broke in two. He staggered back, blinking in wide-eyed, stricken shock at the severed remnant of metal in his hand.
Oh, shit.
O’Malley seized him by the throat, clamping down with a powerful ferocity that made Moore’s earlier stranglehold seem now like a snuggle. Andrew gulped, jerked off his feet and into O’Malley’s face, close enough to feel the sharp, moist huff of his breath, close enough so that when he bared his teeth and hissed again, droplets of mucous and spit peppered his cheeks.
“O’Malley,” Andrew gasped, pawing at the iron-like grip on his throat. “Please!”
O’Malley threw him like a rag doll, sending him sailing across the room. With a rush of wind in his ears, Andrew slammed into the far wall. He fell the floor in a shuddering heap, panting for breath. Forcing himself to move, he stumbled to his feet, clutching his broken piece of IV stand in hand.
What do I do? Andrew forced his lips together in a tight seal, muffling his ragged gasps. He tried to be quiet, limping sideways, following the counter, cabinets and wall back toward the door while O’Malley, crouched again and dog-like, sniffed the floor and drew closer to his side of the infirmary.
What do I do? What the fuck do I do? Andrew panned a quick, frantic gaze around him. On one of the counters, he saw glass jars neatly arranged, some filled with cotton balls, others filled with paper-wrapped swabs and others filled with wooden tongue depressors. He inched toward these now, reaching out and slowly raising the metal lid from this last jar. It made a soft, nearly imperceptible scraping sound as the threaded grooves in the lid brushed the glass lip of the jar, but it was enough to attract O’Malley’s attention. Cat-like, he leaped, collapsing the distance between him and Andrew to less than three feet as he landed on all fours, hunkered near the floor, the bulbous, swollen mass of his nose twitching as he sniffed.
Holding his breath, frightened that the racing, pounding cadence of his heart would be enough to further alert him, Andrew dipped his free hand into the glass jar, curling his fingers around a cluster of tongue d
epressors. He eased them out then cut his gaze across the room, away from the door. With a deliberate flick of his wrist, he tossed one of the wooden sticks, sending it flipping end over end into the shadows. It hit the floor, skittered and spun, and O’Malley’s head snapped around to follow the noise. Again moving with preternatural, impossible speed, he darted across the room.
For each step Andrew took toward the door, he chucked another tongue depressor, luring O’Malley away from him, driving him to the opposite end of the infirmary. Just when he thought he was nearly home free, well within five easy strides of the door, he turned around, meaning to risk it and dart to the threshold, punch in his code and escape. Instead, he stumbled headlong into the same goddamn crash cart he’d tripped over on his way into the room, and as he fell, first against the defibrillator console, then to the floor, its little computer screen reactivated, its tinny voice loud and shrill.
“You have activated the Head Start Heart Smart.”
Shit, Andrew thought, scrambling to his feet as O’Malley wheeled toward the sound. Shit, shit, shit!
He ran for the door just as O’Malley charged, swinging his arms, plowing aside medical carts, shelves, anything and everything in his way. What he couldn’t knock away, he clambered over with terrifying speed and ease.
“Please follow the voice prompts provided for correct application and use of this electronic device,” the defibrillator said, milliseconds before O’Malley tackled the crash cart, sending it toppling to the floor.
As O’Malley grappled with the machine, tangled now in the cables connecting it to the red and yellow pads, Andrew reached the door. Oh, Jesus, he thought, pushing his hair out of his face, struggling to remember. What the fuck was the code? Was it one-zero, one-zero?
He punched this in before realizing this had been Moore’s old code, not the new one. “Fuck,” he hissed, then tried again. He was frightened and panicked, his hand shaking, and for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the goddamn pass code. From behind him, he heard O’Malley thrashing, scrambling to his feet.
One-zero, zero-one.
He typed this in. The light stayed red. The door stayed locked.
“Fuck,” Andrew cried. Balling his fist, he beat against the window. “Somebody help me,” he screamed. “Get me out of here!”
He felt the floor beneath him shudder, O’Malley’s footsteps thunderous as he charged and Andrew whirled, clasping the ruined IV stand in his hands, shoving the threaded tip out ahead of him in feeble self-defense. When O’Malley barreled into him, the shaft caught him just beneath the sternum, punching into the vulnerable meat of his midriff. O’Malley’s own forward momentum drove it through him, impaling himself. A hot splash of blood flew back, soaking Andrew’s hands, his arms, slapping him in the face, and for a moment, he and O’Malley stood together, close enough to kiss, both of them leaning heavily, drunkenly against each other.
“O’Malley,” Andrew whispered, horrified, helpless. He turned loose of the shaft and O’Malley floundered backwards, wrapping his hands around the metal rod protruding from his chest. It was slick and he fumbled for purchase, pawing at it, uttering sodden, slobbering sounds like a cat trying to work a hair ball loose from its gullet. His efforts were hampered by the defibrillator. Somehow his arms had become entangled in the cords, the adhesive patches stuck to his skin and the console dragged behind him on the floor, bouncing and scraping along, its mechanized tutelage still rambling on, unabated:
“Please verify that the Head Start Heart Smart cartridges are correctly positioned on the victim’s bare torso and have not been applied over the nipples, any medication patches or implanted devices.”
Andrew watched, shocked and astonished, as O’Malley began easing the broken metal shaft from his torso, sliding it out centimeter by centimeter, panting heavily all the while.
Oh, shit, he thought, because at first he’d thought O’Malley had retreated because he’d been mortally wounded, that he’d fallen back because he’d been about to collapse, just like any normal human being with a rod through their torso would have done. But judging by the fact that O’Malley spared a vicious grin, a menacing, spittle-laced snarl in his direction, the shaft nearly yanked in full from his chest, Andrew understood he was about to be in for a serious world of hurt.
“Shit.” He spun back around to the door and punched again into the key pad. One-zero, zero-one.
The light stayed red.
“What’s the fucking code?” he screamed. He would have beat his head into the door had he the time. Four digits, binary code, seven options. It wasn’t ten. It wasn’t eleven.
“Twelve,” he whispered, eyes flying wide. “Twelve. The pass code’s twelve.”
He reached out to punch it in—one-one, zero-zero—and felt O’Malley’s hand, heavy and bloody, clamp against his shoulder. As he was whirled violently around to face O’Malley, then slammed back into the door with enough force to splinter the window behind his head in a network of thin, spiderweb-like fissures, he balled his hand into a fist.
“Get off me,” he yelled, punching O’Malley in the face. It felt as if he’d just socked a side of raw beef, one that had been left out to hang in the sun for awhile on a hot summer afternoon. Wet and spongy, the flesh yielded beneath his knuckles, squelching between his fingers. Even though it seemed to stun O’Malley momentarily, he kept hold of Andrew’s shirt, and with another furious cry, Andrew punched him again.
“Let go of me,” he shouted, hitting him again and again, driving O’Malley back. He could feel those nasty pustules and nodules bursting with every blow. Firm beneath the skin, upon impact, they would pop like overripe melons or overfilled water balloons, squirting pus and blood, thick and hot, against his hands, onto his arms.
“Let go,” Andrew yelled, his voice dissolving into an inarticulate, furious garble of sounds as he drove O’Malley away from him. O’Malley stumbled then fell, landing hard against the defibrillator console.
“Defibrillation initialized,” the machine said. “Clear the patient.”
It wasn’t like on TV. There were no sparks as the electrical current surged. No resounding thump! No violent heaving as the affected body became a living, breathing power conduit. The affected body in question was that of O’Malley, and he simply twitched when two hundred joules of electricity surged into his body, lancing up and down the metal IV stand protruding from his chest as it might have a lightning rod. He twitched once, then twice, then pitched sideways, landing with a wet plop! against the infirmary floor.
“Defibrillation complete,” the machine said. “Please continue administering CPR until emergency personnel have arrived.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Andrew hiccupped, watching in horrified fascination as a thin tendril of smoke snaked up from O’Malley’s chest, the place where the IV stand had run him through and the electrified metal had burned him. With it came a strange smell, almost like frying bacon, and with a nauseated gulp, Andrew whirled around to face the door again. “Twelve,” he muttered, his finger shaking as he reached for the key pad. “The pass code is twelve.”
Which, when translated into base-two, was one-one, zero-zero.
He wrenched the door open when the light shifted to green, then yanked it closed behind him. Leaning heavily against it, he closed his eyes and struggled to control the heavy shuddering that shook him from head to toe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Despite Andrew’s screaming, his less-than-subtle escape from the infirmary, no soldiers came to investigate, which shocked the glorious living shit out of him. Even more ominous, there was no answer when he knocked frantically on Dani’s door.
“Dani?” He tried the knob, but it was locked. “Are you in there? It’s Andrew.”
He rammed his shoulder into the door once, twice, three times unsuccessfully, then decided battering wasn’t such a great option. Not only was it not working, but it was loud as hell to boot in the otherwise silent, empty hall. Then he remembered Moore’s pass code.
&n
bsp; He let himself into my room earlier tonight, he thought. Maybe it’s a master code, sort of like a skeleton key that lets him bypass anybody else’s.
Figuring it was worth a shot, he punched it into Dani’s key pad. One-one, zero-zero. To his pleasant surprise—the first of few in as many hours—the red light turned green.
“Dani?” Pushing the door open wide, he hurried inside. The smell of O’Malley’s vomit lingered, thick in the air, and he drew his hand to his mouth and nose, grimacing. “Dani? Are you in here?”
He glanced into the bathroom, then once more into the bedroom to be sure it was all empty. Then he left, closing the door behind him to block out that horrible stink, and frowned.
Where is she?
“I took her.”
Andrew whirled, startled, at Edward Moore’s voice. The older man walked down the corridor toward him. He had his pistol in his hand, and this time, when he raised his arm parallel to the floor, drawing aim on Andrew’s head, Andrew doubted any semblance of rational self-control would stay his trigger finger.
“Where’s Dani?” he asked. “You son of a bitch, if you’ve hurt her…”
Moore drew back the hammer on the nine-millimeter with an audible, ominous click! “I don’t believe you’re in any position to be threatening me, Mister Braddock.”
Conceding, Andrew lifted his hands. “Where’s Dani?” he asked again, his voice softer now, pleading. “Where have you taken her?”
Moore studied him down the line of his gun sight for a moment, then said, “My lab.”
“Why?” Andrew asked.
“To make her tell me where my daughter is,” Moore said, closing the distance between them first to mere feet, then inches. “To make her tell me what you’ve done to Alice.”