by A. R. Wise
"I told you, I don't want anyone engaging them until we know where they're going." Covington pointed sternly at the old Senator.
"I know. But now one of the Nighthawk patrols said they’ve spotted a barge headed out into the bay."
"A barge? One of the graveyard transports?"
"Yes, the one that was parked next to where they tracked my son's vehicle to. They don't know where it's going, but I think Clyde's on board." The Senator took a step forward and held his hand out to Covington in a pleading gesture. "Richard, you have to help me save my son."
Reagan stood up and held the shard of glass behind his leg.
"I told you," said Covington. "Finding Courtland is our first priority. I'm sorry if that puts your son in harm's way, but this is more important than any one person's life. You know that."
"This is my son, Richard. He's my only son."
"And I'll do everything I can to save him, but I'm not going to risk losing a chance to find Courtland. If the kid from that dock knows where Courtland and the police are hiding, then we need to let him lead us there."
"What kid?" asked Reagan.
Covington looked at the Captain and said, "The one you sent our men out for. He took the Senator's son hostage and is headed out after his friend's daughter."
"What about the other two? Mark and Hero?"
"I don't know about them, but the girl is here now. They brought her and one of her daughters here after your friend took off."
Reagan tightened his grip on the piece of glass. "Well, it looks like the good guys might win this after all."
CHAPTER NINE - COLLISION COURSE
"This is it!" Joel handed the report to Barry and nearly started dancing. "Son of a bitch, Barry. We did it!"
"Calm down, Joel. We can't be sure what we did." Barry picked up the papers and started flipping through them.
"It's all there, Barry. The antibodies replicated and the virus is nearly shut out."
"Nearly?"
"Well, yeah. It's not 100% yet, but it's close. Barry, I expected a little fucking smile out of you for this. We just saved the human race."
"I'll smile when we know it's true. One test subject doesn't equal success, you know that."
"All of this data coincides with what Courtland had done. I know we need to run some more tests, but for fuck's sake," Joel glanced at his wristwatch. "It's almost morning and we haven't slept in two days, or something like that. We've been working our ass off for this. For crying out loud, Barry, crack a fucking smile."
Barry looked up and was about to give Joel a grin when he saw the Asian boy staring in at them through the window. "Jesus Christ!" He was startled by the sight as Ben raised his left hand and started tapping on the glass.
Joel went to the door and opened it. "What is it, Ben?"
Joel staggered back and screamed as he clutched his stomach. Barry stood up in a hurry as his assistant fell against the back wall of the office. There was a gash in his stomach that was producing far more gore than seemed plausible. Ben walked in with a bone saw that was dripping with Joel's blood.
Barry slammed his hand on the red alarm button on the wall behind his desk as he pleaded with Ben to calm down. The thirteen year old never paused to regret the horrific vengeance he unleashed upon the scientists that had captured him. Barry kicked and punched, but the child was ferocious as he swiped the razor sharp blade back and forth like a scythe through a wheat field.
Annie stood in the threshold and Ben pulled her inside as Barry watched. His throat was cut, and he was bleeding out as the two children spoke to one another.
"He hit an alarm," said Ben. "I need you to stay here and don't come out of this room. Do you understand me? You stay hiding here no matter what. I'm going to try and ambush whoever walks in here and then there's someone that I need to kill before I find us a way out, but I need you to stay here. What I have to do is going to be dangerous. I need you to stay here."
Annie and Barry stared at one another.
"Are you listening to me?"
"I'll stay here," said Annie as she continued to watch Barry die.
"And if someone finds you, don't tell them about me. If they catch you, I'll come and find you. Okay? But you can't tell anyone I was here. If they know I'm out there, they'll come looking for me."
Barry closed his eyes while Annie watched.
* * *
Laura waited for the right opportunity to attack, and she was ready to kill if needed. The surgeons wheeled her into a new room and she saw the bed they were planning to set her on. It was an old, metal, uncomfortable looking contraption that was adorned with restraining belts. If she allowed them to latch her in, she would lose her opportunity to escape.
She glanced around for a weapon, but saw nothing worth reaching for. The surgeons pressed her gurney against the bed and one of them made their way around the side as they prepared to transfer her.
An alarm startled each of them as a red light began to flash in the hallway. "What the hell?" asked the surgeon closest to Laura. "Who's still here?"
"Covington and Vargas are still here. Maybe it has something to do with one of them."
"What about Forrester?"
"Oh yeah, that's right. He was still working in the Blue Med."
"Should we go check it out?"
"What about her?"
"Fuck her. She's not getting up anytime soon."
She listened to their feet slap on the tile as they ran out of the room and down the hall. After a few moments of silence, when she was sure they were far enough away not to hear her, she tried to sit up.
There was an IV in her right arm and a plastic clip on her right finger that was attached to a wire that would normally plug into a heart monitor. They hadn't bothered to clip it into any machine and she unlatched it before throwing it to the ground. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and tried to move her toes, but they only responded with a meager twitch. Her toenails were painted red, and she found a moment of levity in the thought of painting them on David's lap earlier in the week.
The thought of her dead husband brought reality sinking back in and she tried to shake off the effects of the drugs that plagued her blood. She needed to focus if she was going to find Annie. "Come on, Laura. Get your shit together. Annie needs you."
She let her right foot drop to the tile and waited for the shock of cold that let her know her skin had touched down. Her leg wobbled as she tested her stability and she wasn't satisfied with her leg's strength. Even still, there was no time to wait. She cringed as she pulled her left leg off the side of the gurney and dropped it to the floor. Her entire left foot was wrapped, thankfully, but the pain from the wounds on her ankle were too severe to mask without a debilitating amount of pain killer. She'd been willing to poison herself with Oxycontin the last time she had to walk on her injuries to save Annie, but this time she wouldn't have the option of numbing the pain. She would have to endure it.
Her left foot touched the floor and a shock of pain slammed through her leg and seemed to cause every nerve in her body to tremble. She cursed again and again as she tried to stand, but the agony was too intense and she was forced to sit back down. The gurney shifted beneath her and the IV cart clattered against the metal frame. She glanced at it and then reached out to pull the tall metal stand closer. It could provide a crutch to prevent her from having to set her left foot down.
"Okay, Laura. This is it. Get your ass out of this bed and go save Annie." She gripped the stand near the hook that carried the bag of liquid that was being dripped into her through the tube and forced herself out of the bed.
* * *
The alarm provided Reagan with the distraction he'd been waiting for. As a red light spun in the hallway above their heads, and the two men near him looked up in surprise, he leapt for the General's throat.
General Covington and Captain Reagan had known each other for over thirty years. Reagan's son never knew Richard by any other name than Uncle Rich, and their wives
had traveled the world together while their husbands leisured beside a lake in the mountains. Neither of them had natural born brothers, but there wasn't anyone else that could've done a better job than Richard. There was no man living that Charles loved more, and it was no small task to push the shard of glass into the man's throat.
They struggled, and Richard didn't fall over dead without fighting back, but it was a futile effort. Reagan was much lighter than the General, but he was physically fit and considerably stronger. Richard accepted his defeat at the hands of his beloved friend and stopped struggling once he hit the floor.
Senator Vargas made no attempt to help the General. He stood in shocked silence during the melee and then, when he saw that Reagan would win, he ran away.
Reagan straddled the General and ripped the glass across his throat to open the already fatal wound wider as blood pumped out onto the floor. The red, flashing light reflected off the growing pool as Reagan stared down at his friend's pale, dying face.
The Desert Eagle's barrel was pressed into Reagan's stomach.
Richard smiled up at Charles and pushed the gun harder into the man's stomach as if to make sure he knew that he could kill him. He tried to speak, but his mouth had filled with blood that rolled down from the side of his lips before he sputtered a cough.
"You got me," said Reagan.
Richard pushed the gun into his friend's stomach again as he struggled to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head. He sputtered again and then moved his hand to the side to set the gun on the floor. He smiled at Reagan, then closed his eyes and died.
Reagan looked down at the gun lying in the expanding pool of his best friend's blood. "I know you couldn't kill me, Richard. Say hello to my family for me, and tell them I'll be coming home soon." He picked up the bloody gun. "I've got some work to finish first."
He stood up and looked down the hall at the escaping Senator. He lined up his shot and didn't hesitate. The gun blast echoed through the enclosed hallway and the Senator fell to the ground with a yelp of pain. Reagan had hit him in the leg to stop the man without killing him.
It was a common mistake to think that leg wounds aren't fatal. The upper thigh is very vascular and a wound there can easily kill a man. That's why soldiers are never trained to aim for people's legs and are instead told to go for the chest. It increased accuracy and was just as likely to help the victim survive the shooting as if they'd been shot in the leg. However, Reagan had no interest in saving the Senator's life, and aiming for the man's back had the potential of killing him immediately - which wasn't a danger in a leg shot. He didn't care if he hit a femoral artery and caused the Senator to bleed to death, he just needed to talk to him before he died.
"You're fucking insane. Do you know who I am?" asked Vargas as Reagan approached. Blood splattered the hall around him and there was a chunk of flesh flapping off the front side of the man's leg as he tried to pull himself down the hall. "You're dead. I'll have you and your whole family hunted down and…"
Reagan had no interest in letting him continue. He stomped down on the man's wounded leg and the Senator screeched in agony. "Do you know who I am?" He pointed the gun at the Senator's face. "I'm the man that's going to save your son. Are you going to shut the fuck up and listen to me now? Or are you going to keep trying to pretend to be a tough guy?"
"Why would you save my son?"
"He's with a friend of mine, and I'm willing to bet none of the men on Alpha knew what was going on."
"No. Clyde never knew. He would hate me if he knew. He never knew anything. None of them did. We had them working on the Alpha teams, trying to save people, so that they would feel like the good guys. We didn't want them to know the truth."
"Then I won't kill your kid. You've got my word on that."
"What about me?" The Senator cowered from Reagan. "Are you going to kill me?"
"Depends. Where are they keeping the woman and the little girl that Billy was with? They're here somewhere."
"I don't know."
Reagan aimed the gun with intention. "That's a shame."
"Blue Med." Senator Vargas covered his head and answered quickly. "The girl was taken to Blue Med. They wanted to test her to see if she was producing the antibodies to the illness. Please don't kill me."
"Where's her mother?"
"I don't know. She was on the second floor of the Green Zone, but they moved her when they cut the power to that section."
"Who's still in the facility?"
"There are two surgeons and a couple scientists. That's all I know about."
"How did you get here?"
"I took a helicopter. I was a pilot back in Desert Storm."
Reagan chuckled. "No shit? Me too."
"Please help me get to the medical area. I'm a veteran. Help me, please."
"Where's Blue Med?"
"On the second floor. It's in room 208, I think. Right in that area. Please help me. Please help me. Pease don't let me die." He asked over and over for help as Reagan ignored him.
Reagan searched the man's pockets for anything useful. "I'm not going to kill you."
"Oh, thank you."
"Not because I don't want to, and not because you're a vet, but because I want you to lay here and bleed to death. It'll be a slow, agonizing death, but not nearly as bad as you deserve."
"You son of a bitch. I thought you were supposed to be one of the good guys."
"We've all got a little devil in us, Senator. That's what makes us human." He left the screaming, crying man behind to slowly, agonizingly bleed to death from the gunshot.
* * *
"Toby," Gwen called out to her son. He'd been quiet for far too long. "Please, Toby. Please answer me."
His cage rattled.
"Are you okay?"
He groaned and the cage rattled again.
"Toby, can you hear me?"
His voice became stronger as his cage began to shake. He didn't say any words and instead his groans turned to angry growls.
"Stop moving around so much, honey. That bag of powder is still on top of your cage. If you keep moving around like that, it's going to spill on you. Honey! Stop it! Stop moving so much! Why are you doing that? Toby, what's going on? Can you hear me? Why are you doing that?"
He screeched in agony and anger as the cage began to bounce. Gwen cried out in despair as she listened to her son's tortured wails. She pleaded with him to stop and tried desperately to reach out and hold the cage down, but his violent thrashing caused it to move further away. She could smell the acidic powder in the air and it burned her lungs.
"Toby! Please stop."
The cage banged on the concrete and she heard what she thought was the bag of powder hitting the floor. Then the sound of the cage breaking startled her as Toby cried out furiously.
"What's wrong?" She'd been blinded by the powder, but imagined it was too dark to see anyhow. She reached out in hope of touching her boy. "What's going on?"
He growled at her and she could hear liquid dripping to the floor near where his voice came from. She wandered in a semi-circle through the basement as she groped for any sign of him.
Her fingers brushed across his wet flesh. His skin pulled away from him as her hand passed across his cheek and she was confused by the slimy texture of what clung to her fingertips. It was hot, wet, and the syrupy mess sizzled on her skin.
"Toby?"
He lunged at her and she cried out in terror as his wet, bloody flesh slapped against her own. His skin was covered in the acidic powder and it sizzled at her flesh like boiling water as he clawed at her face. She fell back and started to fight him, but there was no way she could survive. She was trapped, chained to the wall as her dead son ravaged her. His teeth sunk into her neck as he shook his head like some predatory beast taking a first, vicious bite out of its prey.
Gwen wrapped her arms around her boy and held him in a tight, loving embrace as he murdered her.
* * *
"Freeze," said a man's vo
ice from behind Laura.
She stopped but didn't turn around. She'd been through too much to be stopped now. The scissors that she'd found in the room the surgeons had left her in were pressed against her breast and she waited for the guard that had caught her to approach. She wouldn't hesitate to drive the blades into his throat.
"Are you Billy's friend?"
"Come here, I can't hear you," she lied. If she could convince him to get closer, she could drive the scissors into his neck. She stayed facing forward and forced the man to approach her back.
"I'm Reagan."
She didn't know what that meant, and didn't care. If this guard thought his name would make her give up and turn herself in, he was sadly mistaken. She lied again, "I can't hear anything. Someone shot a gun near my head and I can't hear anything. You'll have to come closer."
He walked forward and she tightened her grip on the scissors while facing away from him.
"I was headed out to find your daughter."
He was nearly close enough to kill. Just a few feet more and she would turn and attack.
"Then I was going to try and find you. I guess I lucked out."
"Who did you say you were again?" she asked as he got close enough for her to reach.
"My name's Reagan. I'm a friend of Billy's," he spoke loudly since he believed her lie about being deafened. "I'm here to help you and your daughter get out of here."
Laura started to laugh as she relaxed. She let her hand drop as she turned and revealed the scissors she'd been clenching. "I damn near killed you, mister."
Reagan was an older man, probably in his late fifties, but he was in remarkable physical shape. His jaw was strong and a bushy mustache dominated his facial features with a palette of salt and pepper whiskers. He had bushy eyebrows that rose as he stared down with grey eyes at the scissors that had pressed their definition into Laura's palm from her tight grip.