Sick pe-1

by Brett Battles

  She turned back.

  “This isn’t your fight,” he said. “I appreciate you getting me here, but I think I should go on alone from this point.”

  She stared at him, then said, “Really? Do you know how to get out of the other end of this tunnel?”

  “Is it that hard?”

  “It depends on your definition, I guess.”

  He shrugged. “If you tell me how to do it, I’ll manage.”

  “And what are you going to use for light? You’re not taking my flashlight.”

  “Actually, I am,” he said. “You can wait here until I get back.”

  She took a step away from him, toward the tunnel. “You want to leave me here in the dark? Are you kidding me?”

  “It’ll be safer.”

  “Yeah, until I go crazy because I keep hearing things, then I run straight into a wall and knock myself out. I’m sorry, Mr. Not-In-The-Army-Anymore, but no way in hell I’m staying here in the dark.” With that she turned and started down the tunnel.

  Once more he found himself in the position of following her.

  The tunnel between the buildings was a good six feet wide and at least eight tall, with a gentle downward slope. Ash realized that explained why the stairs from the annex basement had been built. If the tunnel had been dug directly from the main building up to the annex, it would have had a considerably steeper incline.

  After they’d gone nearly fifty yards, Chloe whispered, “We’re getting close, so best to stay quiet.”

  Ten yards further on, they came to a stop in front of a cinder-block wall that closed off the tunnel.

  “I thought you said this went all the way through,” Ash said, feeling suddenly panicky.

  “You’re such a downer.”

  She knelt by the wall and worked her fingers into the gaps on either side of a block on the bottom row. Within seconds, she slid it out. Peeking through, she shined her light into the opening then sat back up. Four more blocks came out. When she was done, she’d created a hole big enough for them to snake through.

  “This was apparently put up when the hospital finally closed. They were supposed to fill in everything on this side of it.” She shrugged. “I guess they didn’t have the money.”

  “How did you find out about it?” he asked.

  She was silent for a moment. “Matt’s people, when they got me out. They showed me.”

  Before he could ask another question, she disappeared through the wall. Ash, left in the dark, had to feel his way down to the opening then slip through and join her. On the other side, the tunnel went on for another twenty feet, then T-boned into a wide corridor.

  “Where exactly are we?” he asked.

  “This is the main hospital. The part that was built into the side of the hill,” she said. “We’re on the top floor, but still underground.”

  Ash tensed. “Where will my kids be?”

  “Two floors down,” she said without hesitation.

  Once more he thought about leaving her behind, but she’d proved more useful than he’d expected. So instead, he said, “Show me.”

  “There are five stairwells,” she told him. “One at each corner, and a fifth along the south wall.” She pointed off to their left. “We’re actually on the fourth floor. Your kids’ll be on the second, in the northeast corner.” As she said this, her jaw clenched a little. She was quiet for a moment. “The quickest way is by either of the north-side stairwells, but there’s an excellent chance the others will hear us before we can even get close.”

  “So we use one on the south side,” he said, eager to move.

  “Yes, but not one in the corners,” she told him. “The one in the middle. This floor used to be where the doctors’ offices were. The middle stairway is attached to the old hospital director’s office. It was his private way of getting in and out.”

  “Fine,” he said impatiently. “Can we just go?”

  She glanced at him without moving. “You might want to get your gun ready.”

  * * *

  The middle stairway creaked a bit as they went down, but not enough, Ash hoped, to draw attention. When they reached the closed door at the second floor landing, Chloe stopped and listened.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she whispered.

  “What’s on the other side?”

  “An examination room. Or at least I think that’s what it used to be.”

  “Do they use it?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “There was a stack of old wheelchairs there when I came through. That was about it. They only use a small area in the back of the building. ”

  As she reached for the door handle, Ash grabbed her arm, stopping her.

  “I’ll go first.”

  Holding the SIG in one hand, he grabbed the knob with his other and eased the door open.

  Indirect sunlight filtered into the examining room from a window on the south wall, providing more than enough illumination to see the stack of wheelchairs Chloe had mentioned. From the dust on the floor it was clear no one had been through here in a long time. Ash stepped inside, and moved quickly across the room to the main door. There was only silence on the other side.

  He hesitated for a moment, then turned to Chloe. “There’s light here. If you want, you can wait until I come back.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “If I want? You’re not telling me to stay?”

  Shaking his head, he said, “It’s up to you.”

  “Let’s go, then. You’re going to need me.”

  He nodded reluctantly, then opened the door. The hallway on the other side was dark, but not pitch-black like the tunnel or the basement. The scant bit of illumination was courtesy of sunlight spilling out of a couple open doors to the left.

  “I assume we go right?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Mind if I carry the flashlight now?”

  She hesitated for a moment, then handed it to him.

  The hallway got darker and darker as they headed back into the section that was embedded in the mountain. There were doors along both sides. The few that were open led into rooms that Ash sensed hadn’t been used in decades.

  They’d been going for just over a minute when Chloe touched his back and pointed ahead at an opening to another hallway. He stopped at the corner, listened, then peered around it. There was a very dim light at the far end, but that was it.

  “If they’re here, that’s the part of the building where they’ll be.”

  If…

  He was beginning to wonder. So far there had been no sign of anyone else in the building. Surely by now, they would have heard at least one of these mysterious people who were supposed to have his children. It was just too damn quiet. The condition of the building didn’t help his mind, either. It was a dump. Why would they have brought his kids here in the first place?

  He turned down the hall, knowing the only way to find out for sure was to keep going.

  Silence continued to reign as they got closer and closer to the other end. With each new step, Ash couldn’t help but think that Matt’s information must have been wrong. There was no way anyone was here. He moved all the way to the end of the hall, then stopped for another check.

  Stone. Dead. Silence.

  Even in places with just a few people around, there was always a sense of others. Ash didn’t have that sense now.

  He stepped out into the intersecting hallway without checking first, knowing no one would be there. And he was right.

  “We’re alone,” he said, not bothering to whisper. “Matt was wrong. They’re not here.”

  Chloe was more tentative as she stepped out to join him. She looked one way down the hallway, then the other, her face full of confusion. “He was sure of it. I know he was.”

  “Maybe he was just—” He stopped himself and shook his head.

  “Just what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What did you mean? Just what?”

  “I didn’t mean anything, okay
?”

  She stared at him, obviously waiting for more. When he remained quiet, she said, “I’d be dead if it wasn’t for Matt and Rachel. There’s no question about it. And you’d be dead, too, if they hadn’t changed how you look and given you a new name. So if you’re questioning whether Matt was lying to you or not, don’t. He wasn’t. He never would.”

  Without another word, she turned and walked down the hallway to the right, fading into the black.

  “Are you coming?” she called out. “I can’t see anything without the flashlight.”

  “What’s down there?” he asked.

  “If your kids were here, they would have been kept down this way. We should check.”

  Doubting they’d find anything, he walked down the hall and joined her.

  34

  Within fifteen minutes of being posted online, video of what appeared to be two teenagers murdered by soldiers somewhere within the quarantine zone had been picked up by several blogs, and spread through the Internet via Twitter, Facebook and a half dozen other social networking sites.

  Its first television appearance was on a German network, thirty-five minutes later. Another hour passed before the American networks finally started showing the footage. While some immediately dismissed it as phony, others pointed not only to the effort that would have been needed to intentionally create something like it, but also to the footage’s incredible realism.

  Network researchers worked feverishly to find out who had posted the video. The account had an ID made up of numbers and letters that, on the surface, meant nothing to anyone. When the video-hosting site was contacted, they denied requests for the user’s true identity, citing privacy guidelines. The only information that had been uploaded with the video was the line: Shot by my friend this morning in the Mojave quarantine zone, so sad!

  While the search for the poster was going on, the Army vehemently denied any connection to the events in the video. They, too, pushed the idea that the footage was staged.

  The breakthrough came in the form of a phone call from a teenage girl named Frances Newcombe of Ridgecrest, inside the quarantine zone, to her cousin John working at Glitz, an entertainment-focused cable channel based in Los Angeles. John was a producer on the long-running show Tinseltown Tales, which, in his case, meant he spent most of his time in edit bays making sure the shows were fast-paced, exciting, and made at least a little sense.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told her when she said she knew who had uploaded the video. He’d been tied up most of the day on an episode about a recently failed celebrity marriage, and was unaware of the latest developments concerning the Sage Flu.

  “How can you not know?” Frances said. “It’s been on the news, like, nonstop for the last hour.”

  “What has?”

  “The video of the soldiers carrying away the bodies of two people they’d killed in the quarantine zone!”

  The producer frowned. Sure, there was the unfortunate incident in Tehachapi, but soldiers openly firing on civilians? Not likely. Besides, his cousin was sixteen, an age when kids easily jumped to conclusions and felt everything was the end of the world.

  “Hold on,” he said, then put his hand over the phone. “Tony, you know anything about some footage on TV of soldiers and dead bodies in the quarantine zone?”

  Tony, the editor, spun around in his chair. “Yeah. It’s wild, isn’t it?”

  “You saw it?”

  Tony nodded. “When I went to get more coffee a few minutes ago. It was on the TV in the break room.”

  “Who shot it?”

  “They don’t know. They’re trying to figure that out. Someone uploaded it to the Internet but didn’t give their name.”

  John took his hand off the phone. “You know who shot this video?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Frances said. “Okay, I don’t know who actually shot it, but I do know who put it up. It’s my friend Martina’s account.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “One hundred percent positive.”

  “Have you asked her about it?”

  “I tried calling her cell, but I couldn’t get through.”

  “Give me a second,” John said. If his cousin was right, and this video was generating a lot of buzz, then this could be a very, very big moment for him. “Okay. Give me her name and her number.” She did. “What about her home? If we can’t get through to her cell, maybe we can find her there.” His cousin gave him that, too.

  “Don’t forget I’m the one who gave it to you,” she said.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll pass this on, and maybe someone will call you to find out more.”

  “You mean like one of the reporters? Will I be on the air?”

  “You never know. I’m glad you called me, Frances. I’ll talk to you later.”

  He hung up before she could ask anything else.

  “What was that all about?” Tony asked.

  John just smiled, then ran out of the room. He didn’t stop running until he reached the door of the network president, who, it turned out, was watching the desert canyon footage on their sister network PCN at that very moment.

  * * *

  When the video of the desert shooting first aired on PCN, Tamara and Joe had been arguing about the story she and Bobby had put together about the riot at Tehachapi, and, specifically, what they thought had really happened to Gavin.

  “I’m telling you,” Joe said. “The minute that goes on the air, we are all fired.”

  “You saw what I saw,” she argued. “I could tell. It was in your eyes. You know it was the same guy.”

  “We all think it was the same guy. We don’t know one hundred percent. But that’s not even my point.”

  “Oh, come on, Joe. How can you say that? That man killed my brother.”

  “See,that’swhat I’m talking about. You aren’t objective on this. Even if it is the same man, and he did kill your brother, you are too emotionally involved to be the one reporting it.”

  “Of course I’m emotionally involved, but I’ve kept myself in check and you know it! That’s a damn fine report and we need to air it.”

  “Oh, we do, do we? And when whoever’s anchoring comes back to you, that is, if they haven’t fired us already for airing something we haven’t warned them about, when he comes back and asks you questions about the report, you’re going to keep your cool? You won’t show any emotion? What if he questions the connection? What if he just hints that maybe there’s another explanation? You going to be able to hold it together then?”

  She clenched her teeth together. “It’s the truth, and you know it.”

  “No. Idon’tknow it. Not for sure.”

  She gawked at him. “What? You saw the same thing I—”

  “Hey, guys!” Bobby called from inside the van.

  “—did. You know it’s the same guy. You know he—”

  “Guys, seriously! Get in here!” Bobby yelled.

  Tamara glanced over at the van, then back at Joe. “We’re not done,” she told him, then headed over to see what the other member of their team wanted.

  Bobby was sitting in the chair in front of the mobile editing station. On one screen was footage he’d been shooting around the base. He was supposed to be putting together a report about the conditions the media had to work under since being moved to the base. On the other screen was a live feed from the network of some amateur footage shot in what looked like a desert canyon. Tamara could see several people in biohazard suits, and, during a brief second when the camera tilted up just a bit, at least one helicopter outside the canyon.

  The suited people were standing next to a couple of bodies.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “More Internet video,” Bobby told her. “Network’s played this one a couple times already.”

  As she watched it, Tamara couldn’t help but feel the sense of something familiar.

  Whoever was doing the filming seemed to be a
bove the action. As the bio-suited people began bagging up the two bodies, a voice said in a haunting whisper, “That’s my brother, and my girlfriend. Those…those men shot them. We weren’t doing anything, but they shot them.”

  “My God,” Tamara said.

  The image zoomed in, intending, it seemed, to identify the people in the suits. But the angle was making it difficult, and the suit masks weren’t helping. Still, the camera operator was able to hold on two of them just long enough to get an idea of what they looked like.

  Tamara tensed. “You’re recording this, right?”

  Bobby nodded. “Every second.”

  She said nothing for a moment, willing herself to remain as calm as possible. “Bobby, can you bring up that video of the soldiers from the helicopters that landed here?”

  He gave her an odd look but said, “Sure.”

  He punched a few buttons, and the report he’d been working on earlier disappeared from its monitor, replaced by the requested shots.

  “Scroll ahead to that part where you were trying to zoom in for me,” she said.

  He sped up the footage.

  “There,” she told him a few seconds later. “Back it up a little bit, then let it play.”

  He did. On the screen they watched the soldiers talk together, then the picture zoomed in quickly, rushing past Gavin’s killer and focusing for a few moments on the interior of the helicopter. Just like she remembered, there was a clump of something yellow on the seat.

  “Freeze there,” she said. Once the shot stopped moving, she looked at the other two. “Am I seeing things?”

  Both men stared at the screen, then looked back at the network feed.

  “Son of a bitch,” Bobby said under his breath.

  The yellow clump looked very much like one of the bio-suits worn by the people in the desert canyon.

  “Hold on,” Joe said, shaking his head. “I’m sure all crews have been outfitted with these kinds of suits. They probably all look alike.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Tamara said. “But then that means you’re also conceding those people in the video are part of the military.”

  Joe didn’t have a response to that.

  “There’s something else,” she said.