24
There was smoke, and there was fire.
His head swam. What the hell? he had time to think, and then pieces of the ceiling fell and hot smoke poured in. He shrugged out of his knapsack and opened it quickly. His hand found the little survivalist SBA mask and O2 canister, and he quickly secured them in place. His eyes burned.
The old TV station had become a burning kill-box in the flash of an instant. He was off-balance, confused and disorientated. The ceiling had warped and buckled in places—not enough to break down the roof and let in daylight, but enough to separate out the false ceiling and create a rubble-strewn jungle gym of a chamber. Flames licked up through the chasm from the basement where, presumably, the explosion had originated.
He heard a young woman’s voice screaming.
On instinct, he answered it, shouting, “Ava!” but the words were muffled by the clear, pliable plastic of his SBA mask. But the canister had maybe eight minutes of air and was designed to help someone escape from a burning building, not perform a search and rescue mission.
He sucked in some oxygen and then removed the mask; without thinking, operating on pure instinct, he called out into the fire. “Ava! Ava, is that you?”
An AKM opened up and steel-jacketed rounds buzz-sawed through the shattered walls and cracked above his head. He took a calculated risk and rolled back over one shoulder, came up, and, using one hand to make three points of contact with the floor, crab-scuttled to the wall.
He froze there, tense, certain a hail of bullets would cut him down. His eyes stung, but his lungs were fine thanks to the SBA—for now. He needed to take Gruber down as quickly as possible, before his finite supply of oxygen ran dry. But ‘quick’ wasn’t the way blind-fighting worked. It was a game of nerves where the other senses of hearing and intuition struggled to make up for the lack of sight. Rushing in the dark caused noise, and noise brought certain death with it.
Parker remained motionless in the now oppressive, furnace-like atmosphere. The female voice no longer screamed, no longer made any sound at all. He strained, looking for even the slightest hint of motion, or any sound above the trip-hammer thumping of his own heart in his ears. His eyes adjusted slowly, until forms began taking shape from the inky black.
The floor lay littered with debris and was as uneven as a lava field from the wreckage of the collapsed ceiling. The ground was precarious, with jutting timbers and piles of shattered masonry and timber. Artifacts of the building’s former use were scattered like pieces of broken landscape among the rubble; overturned desks, bits of computer consoles, busted chairs, and various other bric-a-brac. It was a treacherous hunting ground.
Acutely aware of his diminishing oxygen, Parker began moving. He pivoted slowly, the muzzle of the pistol tracking in time to his slowly shifting eyes. Sheets of flame threw up blinding flares of illumination even as more smoke spilled into the area. He used one hand to press against the wall and steady himself. Then crossing one leg in front of the other, he shifted, stepped, and stopped. Repeated his scan.
Over and over, he did this as the moments stretched out into unbearable chunks of tension, twisting his already frayed nerves into knots. Gruber did not fire wildly again. Parker was not attacked from out of the darkness, but neither could he clock any sign of the cultist.
Then the inevitable happened. Hunting among the uncertain light in the ruin, he came up to a pile of rubble that was too big to safely cross. Like a peninsula of land, the mound jutted from the wall. Parker lowered himself and reached his free hand out in front of him, taking up a position like a fullback crouching at the line of scrimmage.
Pistol up, he maintained three points of contact and edged himself forward. Step. Listen. Step. Listen. The fire was loud. He was soaked in his own sweat and his stinging eyes were blurry with tears. Each moment stretched into the next like nails raking a chalkboard. His foot came down on a bit of debris and it made a sharp crunch underfoot. His foot broke through a hole in the weakened floor then, and he stumbled and fell. Spread flat, he froze.
From less than three feet away and directly in front of him, Gruber triggered his assault rifle. The roar hammered in a deafening, sudden avalanche of sound. Parker saw the other man silhouetted in the muzzle flash and twisted. Pushing up and posting on his leading hand, he snatched his leg free and swung himself around in a tight semi-circle.
His shins banged into Gruber’s legs and swept his feet out from under him. The cultist slammed to the ground and his weapon clattered off across the rubble. Like a crocodile striking from ambush out of the water, he slid up onto the sprawled-out man and twisted him over.
One hard, strong hand latched onto his throat and the other brought the muzzle of the .40 caliber pistol down into Gruber’s face hard enough to crush the man’s nose. Dark blood gushed out.
“Freeze!” Parker yelled, though again his SBA mask distorted and muffled the sound.
Beneath him, he felt the man stiffen once in resistance and then relax. Brutally, Parker pushed the muzzle of his gun harder against Gruber’s already broken nose, smiling grimly when he heard him hiss in pain.
Leaning forward, Parker eased the weight of his body down through the pistol so that it rested fully against the pinned man’s face. With his other hand, he pulled off his knapsack as around them smoke grew thick as morning fog.
“Look asshole—” Gruber began.
“Shut up,” Parker said. His vision was returning and he could make out the hard angles of the man’s face, the loose curls of his hair, and the shadows of his eyes. He reached up and pulled the SBA down.
“Hello, asshole,” he said. “I have some questions.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Gruber told him. This was not an unexpected response.
“Where’s the girl, where’s Ava?” Parker demanded.
Gruber looked up at him without flinching.
“She’s not seeing visitors at the moment; please come back later.”
Parker let go of his shirt and slammed his fist into Gruber’s face. Gruber grunted under the hit and the back of his head impacted the floor hard. More blood gushed from his nose. He looked up at Parker and smiled.
“Is that all that you got?” he asked.
“How many?” Parker demanded. “How many children have you taken?”
“Enough to keep the future alive,” Gruber said. “Enough to save humanity.”
“You call this a religion?” Parker snapped. “You sick, child-stealing fucks!”
“First, you must survive,” Gruber told him. “Then you must win.” He continued, “If you’re not around, or have lost out to a stronger power, then it doesn’t matter what you believe or what your goal is. It’s all for nothing.”
“Ends justify means,” Parker nodded. He pushed the muzzle of his weapon into Gruber’s face. “I can get behind that. Which might be too bad for you. You sanctimonious prick, you murdered a young woman,” he said, voice flat.
Gruber was unimpressed. “Bad day,” he said.
Parker almost killed him then. It was too much. Bad day, indeed.
His hand started shaking with rage and he tightened his grip on the pistol. To give himself something to do, he reached out beside him and blindly pulled a flare free from his pack. He ran the flare along the floor like a kitchen match, popping the top off and igniting it. It flared harshly yellow and bright. The light burned starkly and without the uncertain consistency of the flames gleaming in flickering bursts through the immensely thick smoke. He saw Gruber clearly in it.
The man winced at the sudden flare of light, squinting against the brightness as he tried turning his face away. The muzzle of Parker’s pistol stopped him.
“Where the fuck is she?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Gruber shouted. Spit flecked the corners of his mouth. “She was downstairs, but I think she’s the one who did all this. Must have got to the genny somehow,” he added. “Clever girl.”
Parker felt the stirring of the snake in his bowels
. He remembered the voice crying out. Frustrated, feeling time slipping from him, he flung down the flare and took his pistol in both hands.
“You going to murder me?” Gruber asked. “I ain’t exactly fighting back.”
Parker weighed his options. He didn’t seem to have a lot of them. Nervous, he adjusted his grip on the pistol in his hand. Suddenly, though, that feminine voice cried out again.
“Help! Help me!”
He snapped his head toward the sound.
The distraction allowed for Gruber to reach over and snatch up the burning flare. He lifted it in one smooth motion and slammed Parker in the side of his head. Parker screamed, flesh searing, and fell back even as Gruber tried to rise, to grab the Glock from him. He pulled the trigger, crazy with the pain of his scalp searing. The pistol went off in his hand, and didn’t stop firing as he fell back.
He emptied half the clip before landing on his back, and almost a full two-thirds of the rounds he’d triggered had missed Gruber completely. But at that range, the ones that hadn’t missed had torn the other man apart.
Chunks of loose flesh exploded from the cultist’s chest, throat, and head. The slugs burrowed in with a merciless force so that bones shattered, organs burst, and blood splashed as if from a hose. Parker couldn’t have done more damage if he’d gone after him with a machete and a sledgehammer.
In agony, Parker dropped the pistol and brought both hands up to his burning head. He was still screaming—the pain was crazy, and driving him mad, to useless attempts to escape from it, to shake it off or slap it out. Nothing helped, and he groaned through clenched teeth in agony. Kicking backwards, he pushed himself across the floor in an aimless, flailing circle. He tried standing, fell, and tried again. He staggered up and, still crying out in pain, he stepped backwards and spun. He hit a support beam and staggered back.
Stepping backward, his foot came down on one of Gruber’s out-flung legs. His ankle rolled and he went down, pitching over backwards. He hit the ground and felt the heat rising from beneath him like an oven, and knew it was blazing with fire on the floor beneath him. He struggled to get up and heard the creak as the timber gave way.
Then he fell.
25
Parker dropped the ten feet and hit hard. The jolt stunned him sharply enough to knock the pain back for a moment and, in a dull, stupid way, he was able to think again finally after the all-encompassing pain of the road flare burn.
He felt a burning sensation on his arm and snatched it back. His sleeve was on fire, and so he slapped it out. Black smoke made him cough, the heated air burning at his lungs. Once his arm was extinguished, he fought to find and put his SBA mask back on.
Flames leaped around him like he was a piece of meat in a barbeque pit. He inhaled deeply through the mask. It smelled like soft plastic—it was wonderful. His nausea faded, and it felt like he was swimming back up through the black smoke to a cleaner place. He became fully conscious again, roused into action.
The side of his head where the flare had burned him radiated pain. He took this as a good sign since third degree burns didn’t hurt; the nerves were dead. He’d have to inspect the wound in a mirror to gauge its extent. For now, it was enough to know it hurt like a bastard.
He was going to burn his O2 out in seconds if he didn’t get himself under control and start thinking clearly. His exposed skin tightened painfully under the relentless heat and he staggered to his feet, looking up. The hole in the ceiling hung ten feet above him. He couldn’t have jumped that far on a good day, let alone right now. He looked around, desperation pushing on the pain, pushing on his calm.
He saw that he was at the end of a tunnel of fire. Through a hole blasted through one of the walls, he saw still more flames. Turning again, he saw what he thought might be a doorway to a hall. He moved to it and looked out.
He began calling Ava’s name then, but there was no answer. He grew increasingly apprehensive. This wasn’t something he could fight. This building was a bonfire, pure and simple. He only a little bit of time left before the ceiling above him caved in all the way. When it did, he would die.
He screamed Ava’s name again and cast about. The smoke was too thick. Desperate, he dropped to his knees to get below the smoke. It was cooler down here, closer to the ground, but not by much. He turned first one way, then the other, calling Ava’s name.
“I’m here!” a weak voice cried out.
“Come toward my voice!” he yelled.
Out from a doorway at the end of the hall, he saw a human form crawling. His eyes burned too fiercely to see clearly, but he knew that, without a SBA like his, the girl couldn’t last long. She was coughing hard, and as she got closer, he saw her face was lined with soot, marred by the lines from her tears.
Above them, somewhere in the building, a section of roof, or a wall, collapsed with a crash. He had to act or they were dead. Rushing forward, he grabbed her up. She came willingly into his arms, her body limp, head lolling. Running on instinct, he turned and entered the room he’d just left.
He saw what he needed and moved into action. Setting her down for a moment, Parker grabbed an office desk and heaved. It exploded from under the burning timber heaped upon it, smoldering like a campfire itself. It was heavy and awkward, but it came when he pulled.
The desk slid across the burning, uneven floor and Parker heaved it up under the hole in the ceiling. Picking up Ava’s slack form, he threw her over his shoulder. The girl did take after her mother in at least one aspect, he realized. She was positively waif-like in her thinness. He climbed up onto the desk and looked up. It remained one hell of a jump.
He exploded upwards and caught the hole by the edge before pulling himself up in a chinning motion, the way he had a hundred times while training back in the day. He came over the edge and pushed clear of the hole. Rolling over onto his back, he gulped down huge draughts of air through his SBA. He heard the filter whistle faintly and realized he was scraping bottom.
His head burned where Gruber had struck him with the flare. Pushing through the agony, he stripped off the SBA and pushed the facemask over Ava’s mouth and nose. She hungrily sucked the remaining air into her lungs.
He rolled over and came to his feet to look around. The walls and floor were starting to good and truly burn now. He saw the corpse of Gruber. There was nowhere to go, and the only thing keeping him going was his will not to quit. He refused to stop.
He picked up Ava, cradling her in his arms. His lungs burned and he was nearly blind in the smoke, which had somehow only grown thicker. He didn’t know which way to turn—he’d become disorientated in the smoke and confusion. He thought he knew where the roof access staircase was, but immediately realized that wasn’t going to help.
Then, like the sound of a foghorn piercing the mist and warning ships off the rocks, he heard Finn. He choked on his laughter. The girl had cojones too big to be believed.
“Parker! Parker!” she yelled. “Parker, are you in there?” She sounded scared.
He couldn’t yell back, as he would only have choked, but he turned toward the sound of her voice and ran for his life. Shielding Ava as best he could with his body, by the end of the sprint he was so close to asphyxiation that he stumbled like a drunk.
He called out, “Finn!”
She shouted his name back and he turned toward the sound, blindly trusting her. He’d started to swoon and go down when he caught a current of heat and smoke running in a straight channel, and realized it had to be the drawing effect of an open door.
He stumbled out of the smoke and, suddenly, there was Finn, hardly bigger than the girl in his arms, beside him and supporting him. Together, they stumbled out of the burning building and into fresh air. They kept going across the parking lot, headed back to the front gate to escape the smoke and heat. The building was a funeral pyre, but as Parker turned his face to the heavens to breathe, he saw that the column of smoke pouring from the building was one among many rising out of the city hellscape and up toward
the sky.
He dropped to his knees, chest heaving, and let Ava spill out of his arms. He yanked the SBA off of her and half-slumped. “Is she breathing?” he managed to gasp.
Finn leaned in close to Ava, ear pressed to her lips, hand resting on her friend’s chest. She looked at Parker, eyes bright with tears and too overcome with emotion to speak. She nodded and began bubbling over with elated laughter.
“Yes,” she told him. “Yes, she is.”
He began to chuckle—letting out what was a goofy, unselfconscious sound that quickly turned into a hacking cough. Sweet Jesus, I did it, he thought. I really fucking did it.
“If you move, I will kill you, you sonofabitch,” Dr. Marr said.
Surprised, the hacking and coughing Parker turned to look at the woman. She looked a mess, hair in a harpy halo, clothes torn and grimy, her face smeared with soot like war paint. He tried rising, and she stepped over and hit him in the head with the butt of a pistol. He went down hard, almost losing consciousness.
Finn came off of her knees shrieking, but Marr pointed the gun at her immediately and the young woman froze. Parker went for his pistol, but he was too slow, too groggy, too hurt, and Marr caught the motion and beat him to the action easily.
“I am going to kill you,” she seethed.
“Please,” Ava said. “Please, Lorraine. I’ll come with you—please don’t hurt them. This is crazy.”
“You had your chance,” Marr snapped. “You knew what was at stake and you ruined it.”
Looking at her, Parker decided it was his unqualified professional opinion that the woman had snapped. The poised, coldly articulate harridan he’d met less than two hours before was gone. In her place was a lunatic on the verge of a full psychotic break.
911: The Complete Series Page 23