by sara12356
Larry, Curly, Moe and Shemp, Andrew thought, still frantically waggling the Zippo beneath the broom bristles, even though the lighter had grown hot in his hand, the stink of searing metal growing as acrid as that of scorched plastic. Enough of the bristles had melted that the entire end of the broom now smoked, stinging his eyes, making him blink against reflexive tears.
He stepped over Suzette’s outstretched, motionless legs, sparing her a glance. Her head listed toward her shoulder, her eyes frozen in a sleepy half-blink.
Damn it, Suzette, why didn’t you come with me? he thought with a momentary pang that might have been anger with her, but more powerfully, was anger at himself. Why didn’t I make her? Why didn’t I try to make things right with her, do something, say anything so she’d have just shut up and come?
Tilting his head back, he hoisted the broom head aloft. He’d deliberately moved this way to reach one of the smoke detectors set into the ceiling. It was a photoelectric variety, and he strained to get the smoking bristles as close to it as he could. From overhead, a sharp, startling tone suddenly sounded, a woman’s voice coming from hidden speaker plates beneath the ceiling tiles.
“Warning,” she said. “Smoke detected in sector nine-seventeen. Fire suppression system to engage in ten seconds. Please observe emergency protocol and evacuation procedures at this time. This is not a drill.”
He didn’t know if the screamers understood what he was doing until that moment, but they figured it out and lunged at him, any pretense of coyness or clumsiness aside. They charged like grizzly sows defending their cubs.
“Nine seconds,” the automated woman’s voice said.
Andrew swung the broom between his hands, smashing the end of it into Shemp’s head as he charged. The broom handle snapped, the cheap aluminum splintering in two with the impact, but the blow knocked charred and smoldering bits of plastic bristles scattering like confetti and stunned the screamer enough to send it stumbling sideways.
“Eight,” said the woman. “Seven.”
The screamer with the broken jaw—Moe, as Andrew had come to think of him—darted in from Andrew’s left. As Andrew pivoted, it grabbed the broken broom shaft in its hand, trying to wrest it away from him.
He’d dropped the Zippo, but true to design, the flame had remained lit as it had fallen into some of the blankets from Suzette’s nest. These had started to smolder, sending more smoke into the air, with small flames beginning to lick at the fabric in widening tongues.
Andrew shoved against the broom handle, turning it loose as the screamer tripped over Suzette’s corpse. It floundered for a moment, its bulging eyes seeming all the more wide with surprise, then fell against the burning blankets. With a startled howl, it scrambled upright, its deformed arms and legs getting tangled in the smoldering folds. It flapped its arms, danced a mad jig and screeched as it tried to shrug its way free.
“Six,” the overhead voice droned. “Five, four.”
The mangrove-looking screamer—Curly, as seemed fairly apt—plowed into Andrew like a runaway bull, knocking him off his feet, pinning him to the ground as they landed together. Andrew reached up, but rather than grabbing it in a chokehold, felt his fingers sink between the pulsating shafts of its veins. With a disgusted yell, he clawed at them, seizing fistfuls and yanking, feeling the rubbery tissue squelch and yield beneath his fingers. Blood spurted as he ripped them open, spraying his face. As quickly as he could rip open the veins and arteries, he watched new ones grew whip and twine upward to take their place.
“Three, two,” said the automaton. “One. Fire suppression engaged.”
A claxon sounded, sharp and shrill, and then, from overhead nozzles, a thick spray of highly pressured carbon dioxide vapor suddenly plunged down. Immediately, the room was engulfed in a dense fog. Andrew managed one deep gulp for breath before it washed over him, obscuring even the screamer straddling him from view. Clamping his lips together, he held his breath.
There was no amount of regeneration in the world that could allow an organism to breathe without oxygen and in less than five seconds, the heavy blanket of gas had completely displaced all of it in the room. The screamer fell away from Andrew and he could see it if he squinted. It writhed on the floor beside him, pawing at its throat as it suffocated. Once it was off of him, Andrew acted fast, scrambling to his feet, rubbing furiously at his eyes to get the sting of blood out of them. Hands outstretched, he floundered toward the doorway until he hit the wall, and from there, he patted and pawed until he found the blue metal box mounted just inside the threshold.
It’s oxygen, Alice had told him. Little portable tanks, a mask. They’re in all the rooms. Daddy said it’s an ocean standard.
He found two cans inside, each smaller around than a beer can, but each affixed with a clear rubber face mask at the end of the tapered nozzle, with a little plastic handle for administering the flow of oxygen from can to mask. Yanking them loose, he shoved one against his mouth and nose, then depressed the trigger. He heard a soft hiss and took a breath.
How long before you smother? he thought, panicked. He spun around and stumbled forward, tucking the second canister protectively beneath his arm. He didn’t know how much oxygen one of the little cans contained. Judging by the size, he suspected not much. They’d been designed to provide enough oxygen for the wearer to get out of the building, not for any long-term survival.
The carbon dioxide nozzles had stopped spraying, and the hazy cloud began to dissipate. He could see the silhouettes of screamers sprawled on the floor, still scrabbling weakly with their deformed limbs, uttering horrible, sodden, gagging sounds. When he found Dani, he fell to his knees. Taking only intermittent breaths from his mask, then laying the can aside, he tore at the overlapping tendrils of Langley’s intestines, which he’d used to bind her in a gruesome, mummy-like fashion, nearly to her hairline. Andrew ripped them back from her face enough to find her mouth and nose, then pressed the oxygen mask against her, depressing the plastic trigger. It took two hits from the canister before her eyelids fluttered, then flew open wide. He heard her muffled cry against the rubber mask and shook his head at her.
It’s all right, he tried to convey, leaving the mask on her face. She was disoriented, though, frightened and confused, and struggled briefly with him, trying to push him away, slapping at him in a frantic frenzy. After a moment, realization dawned on her, along with recognition, and her struggles ceased. She uttered a stifled cry then sat up, shrugging and thrashing to work her hands loose from Langley’s guts.
Working together, they managed to wrestle her free. Leaning heavily against him, she stumbled to her feet, both of them keeping their oxygen masks over their mouths and noses. Andrew nodded to indicate the doorway, and she nodded once in affirmation. He kept a steadying arm around her as they limped together toward the door. One of the screamers—Larry, it looked like, to judge by its massive, misshapen hands—pawed weakly for them as they passed, and with a muffled cry, Dani danced sideways to avoid it. It didn’t move again, but they passed it quickly nonetheless, giving the rest of them as wide a berth as possible in their bid to escape.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
By nothing short of a miracle, they managed to make their way back to the main entrance of the laboratory, and staggered together out into the night, the darkened expanse of the courtyard. Only then were they able to cast aside their oxygen masks, and both Andrew and Dani collapsed to their hands and knees, side by side in the grass, dragging in deep, whooping mouthfuls of air. It was cold outside, the pervasive chill made even worse considering their clothes were soaked with blood.
Blood and God only knows what else, Andrew thought, sitting up, grimacing as he drew the tacky, soggy front of his T-shirt back, then let it slap against his skin again.
“I couldn’t shoot,” Dani whispered, her voice strained. “Andrew, I…I’m sorry. I couldn’t shoot. I just kept seeing them in my mind, the way they were.” She blinked at him, her eyes enormous, childlike and fearful, her f
ace streaked with gore, her hair sopping with it, clinging to her scalp and framing her face in messy tangles. “I knew them. All of them except Langley…they were my friends.”
“It’s alright.” Hooking an arm around her neck, he drew her against his shoulder. She trembled in his embrace and he kissed her brow, grime and gore be damned. “Everything’s going to be alright now, Dani.”
“What happened back there?” she asked with a timid glance over his shoulder at the lab.
“Inert gas fire suppression,” he said. “Carbon dioxide. It’s heavier than oxygen, so it displaces it, puts any fires out.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I mean, what happened to them? To Langley and the others…to Alpha squad.”
He tried to explain, even though he felt fairly certain her understanding of bioengineering would as limited as his own.
“Dr. Moore did that to them? On purpose?” She began to rock back and forth against him, clearly in shock. “ Oh, God. Oh, my God.”
“It’s alright,” he soothed again, stroking his hand against her hair. “Come on. We’re wet and it’s cold. We need to get one of the trucks and get out of here.” He told her about Moore and Alice’s escape, and what Moore had told him about the roads leading to and from the compound.
“They’ve been clear the whole time?” Dani asked. “But why would Major Prendick lie about that? Why would he want us to think we couldn’t leave?”
“I don’t know.” Andrew shook his head.
They stood together and, huddled against the chill, made their way across the courtyard toward the parking lot and garage. “What happened to Langley,” Dani said. “That’s what was happening to Thomas, wasn’t it?” Her eyes had grown tearful at the mention of her friend and when Andrew nodded, she uttered a soft, pained gasp. “They did that to them, Prendick and Moore. They meant to do that to all of us.”
They’d neared the parking lot and could make out the looming silhouettes of two heavy duty trucks parked near the garage. “Where are the keys?” Andrew asked.
“By my desk,” Dani replied. “Inside the garage.”
They both spared a long moment to study the garage door, which unfortunately for them, was closed.
“The power’s out,” Dani said, breaking away from Andrew and squatting in front of it. “But I think there’s enough room to get our fingers beneath the bottom, try to raise it by hand.”
“Okay.” Andrew crouched beside her, wedging his fingertips between edge of the door and the pavement. “On three?”
She nodded and he counted out. At three, they both furrowed their brows and dug in their heels, grunting as they strained to pry the enormous door up on its tracks. With a grating squall of metal against metal, it lurched and rumbled slowly, begrudgingly up a few inches. It was all they could manage before the strain grew too much, and they both released their grips, resting for a moment.
“If we can get it up a little more, I can crawl underneath,” Dani said.
“Let’s try again, then.” Andrew slid his hands beneath the metal rim. “One, two…three!”
Again, he gritted his teeth as he and Dani both heaved against the door. This time, the scraping as it rolled up the tracks sounded agonized and shrill. It moved slightly higher, no more than a few centimeters and exhausted, they had to fall back.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asked. “Back inside the lab, when I was still locked inside Moore’s office. You told me I was your reason. Did you mean that?”
He looked at her for a long moment, holding her gaze, unable to turn his eyes from her. Yes, he wanted to tell her. Yes, I meant it, each and every word.
“Dani,” he said softly, reaching for her. He let his fingers brush lightly against her face. She smiled at his touch, turned her face toward the caress.
He was so distracted that at first, he thought the sharp ratcheting sound he heard was the door lifting in the overhead tracks, that somehow the power had come back on and its motor was raising it once more toward the ceiling. It wasn’t until he felt bright, searing pain lance through his right ankle and his entire leg abruptly gave out from underneath him, sending him crashing to the ground, that he realized.
Gunshots. I’ve been shot!
“Andrew!” Dani cried, then more shots rang out, the rapid patta-pat-PATTA of an M16 assault rifle set to burst mode, allowing a torrent of rounds to fly from behind them. They clanged in a noisy, staccato burst against the metal garage door, leaving dented craters with each resounding impact, sending a spray of sparks as they struck.
“Run,” he yelled, scrambling forward, ducking his head and forcing his shoulders beneath the thick lip of the garage door. “Dani, take cover!”
She dove for the garage door, smaller than he was, wriggling beneath more easily. His waist had cleared, his ass nearly so, but when she reached to help him, getting her feet beneath her again, more bullets punched into the slick concrete floor between them, forcing her to dance back.
“Stop shooting,” she screamed, even as more rounds pelted into the garage door, an overlapping barrage of drum-like pounding. “Whoever’s out there shooting, stop,” she yelled again. “It’s Specialist Santoro and Andrew Braddock. We’re friendlies! We’re friendlies!”
Andrew had made it into the garage and crawled on his belly away from the threshold, trying to get out of the line of fire, dragging his injured leg uselessly behind him. Reaching the side of the nearest truck, he sat up against the front wheel and jerked up the cuff of his pants. The bullet had sheared away a hefty chunk of flesh from the back of his ankle. Shit, he thought, clapping his hand against the wound. Blood had soaked his sock and pooled in his boot. He could feel it there, squishing and hot beneath his heel.
“Andrew,” he heard Dani call out. He risked a peek around the truck’s front bumper and saw her crouched against the wall by the partially opened door. “Are you okay?”
“I’m hit,” he called back. Using the fender to brace himself, he tried to get to his feet. Each time he’d settle his weight against his injured leg, however, it would abruptly fail him, sending him crashing to his knees with a frustrated, hurting cry. “I can’t stand up.”
“Hang on. I’m coming,” Dani said. But as soon as she ventured a cautious step forward , new rounds burst out, plowing chunks out of the concrete near her feet and she scrambled back again, yelping in fright.
“Who’s out there, goddamn it?” she shouted. “We’re friendly, I said. Friendly!”
The shots stopped. As the resonant echoes subsided, a heavy silence fell upon the dark garage. Then, from outside, a soft but steady sound, the crunch of thick boot treads against concrete. Footsteps.
“I would have thought you’d be dead by now, Mister Braddock,” a voice called as a pair of legs stepped into view beneath the edge of the door. “I’ve given you plenty of opportunities.”
A familiar voice.
“Prendick,” Andrew seethed. When the bullets had flown again, he’d shrunk behind the truck’s tire, but raised himself enough now to look beyond the grill. As he watched, Major Prendick crouched down and entered the garage, crawling the way he’d undoubtedly learned in basic training ages earlier: on his belly, his rifle in his hands, his head raised so he could keep a wary eye ahead of him. Once inside, he stood again, sweeping his gaze cautiously around, waiting for his field of vision to adjust to gloom. Cocking the M16, he chambered a round, then clasped the gun at the ready.
“And you, Specialist Santoro,” he said. “I’m extremely disappointed in this gross dereliction of duty. This is going to go down in my report, I’m afraid, along with a recommendation you be brought up on official charges. You’re looking at a bad-conduct discharge, young lady, along with forfeiture of pay and jail time. All mandatory. I hope aiding and abetting Mister Braddock in the undermining of this facility and its operations has been worth it.”
Past the older man’s shoulder, Andrew saw Dani, even though Prendick hadn’t yet. She’d been crouching, motionless, in the
shadows by the doorway, but moved her hand now, reaching for something lying on the floor. Andrew couldn’t make out what it was until she picked it up and it caught a wink of dim light—a monkey wrench. Looking across the garage, she met Andrew’s gaze, her eyes round and imperative.
He read her loud and clear.
“The only one guilty of anything around here, Prendick, is you,” he snapped, watching the man’s face whip in the direction of his voice. Prendick swung the gun toward him as well, his finger folding against the trigger, and with a yelp, Andrew scrambled back on his hands and knees as bullets peppered the front end of the truck. Within the confines of the garage’s interior, the sound was deafening, like overlapping rounds of cannon fire.
“You missed me,” Andrew yelled, once the echoes faded and the pungent stink of scorched gunpowder began to dissipate.
He heard the faint squeak of rubber against the floor as Prendick stepped toward him, then the older man chuckled. Andrew pressed himself onto his belly so he could look beneath the truck. He could see Prendick from the knees down, as well as Dani as she peeled herself away from her corner by the doorway and began inching along behind the Major, the wrench raised in her fist.
“You’re a good one to talk about dereliction of duty, you son of a bitch,” Andrew called out, baiting Prendick. “Since it’s your fault those guys in Alpha squad ended up monsters. Moore tried to tell you what would happen if you gave them the virus too fast, but you wouldn’t listen.”