by Terry Yates
“What are you talking about?” Kyler said, trying to keep Potts calm.
“I was about to shoot that…that thing, when your friend here almost knocked me cold and made his little coochie mama pose with it, so he could have a picture to sell.”
Knowing all eyes were on him, Gringo turned his gaze back to Samantha.
“That’s how she got this?” Kyler asked, his jaws now clenched in anger.
“How could you?” Zora chimed in, now standing over him, a look of disgust on her face.
“I didn’t think it would bite her…I thought it was safe,” he said softly, still looking only at Samantha.
Zora stepped even closer to him, her face almost red with rage. “You didn’t think it would…how could you not…how could you put your own wife in danger that way! That thing’s killed nine people that we know of. There’s no telling how many… don’t you know that werewolf will…” She suddenly stopped in mid sentence, her chest heaving in and out. Everyone waited for her to finish her sentence, but she was through. She turned on her heels and walked away, leaving a deafening silence in her wake.
“What do we do now?” asked Zack Olsen.
“We wait it out.” Potts answered.
“Wait it out?” Ariella O’Hearley asked, frowning. “We’ve got a monster possibly looking for a way into this place, and we’ve got a hurricane either coming or here already. We need to go down the elevators. We need to get as far away from everything as we can.”
“Can’t do it,” Potts told her.
“What do you mean you can’t do it?” Ariella came back.
“Whatever’s going on in there is top secret. We don’t have clearance.”
“I do,” Said Locklear, holding out another cardkey.
CHAPTER 33
The elevator moved slowly, the whirring sound of its motor was the only sound being made. Kyler, Potts, Sam Fong, Locklear, and Sylvia stood silent as Gringo continued to hold Samantha in his arms, his face pale from worry. They were the first group to go into the elevator. There was a bank of four elevators just inside the building, but this elevator went down further than any of the others. It couldn’t go to the bottom, because Locklear’s clearance stopped at the twelfth floor. There were at least another six or seven floors below it, Locklear wasn’t sure.
No one had said a word since Potts told the group about how Samantha got bitten. The shame of it seemed to drain what little life was left in the group completely out. Potts had hardly taken his eyes off of Gringo since he had pointed his gun at his head. Kyler was amazed that Potts had actually acquiesced and allowed the group to go down into the depths of the building. He figured that since Potts didn’t have clearance to go down to the lower floors that none of them would be going. Top secret was top secret, and hurricane or not, or werewolf or not, no one without proper authorization was going down those elevators.
Kyler felt like he was in a sci-fi movie…hell, he was in a sci-fi movie, what with the werewolf and two hurricanes. They were all still wet causing large puddles to form on the floor of the car. The elevator continued to cruise past each floor, even though no floor indicator was anywhere inside the elevator. They had the floor buttons to push, but nothing to tell you what floor you were passing. Kyler kept thinking of the Andromeda Strain, the Michael Crighton book/movie where the scientists worked in a building much like this one.
The elevator stopped suddenly, causing most of them to jump.
“Twelfth floor,” Locklear, said as if he were a train conductor announcing the latest stop.
The doors opened and Locklear stepped out first, followed by Gringo still carrying Samantha, then Sylvia, Kyler, Sam, and Potts. They found themselves in a well- lighted corridor; the walls were white which made it seem extremely long. As they followed Locklear, they saw several doors on each side of the hallway. They were unmarked by any words or even numbers telling you what type of office or department it was. They were also cattycornered from the one across the hall from it. It looked as if the powers that be didn’t even want a person in one office to be able to look directly across the hallway into another one.
“Amazing,” Sam said, breaking the silence. “The top area is dimly lit and made to look like any other office building, but down here, all the power is on and working.”
“Camouflage,” Potts replied.
“Yes,” Locklear told them over his shoulder. “Whoever built this place wanted to make sure that no one knew about its nether regions.”
Kyler wanted to laugh at the Professor’s choice of words. He reminded him of Frasier Crane on Cheers, who so longingly wanted to be one of the guys, but his high IQ and his Harvard education made it nigh impossible to drop down to his friends level.
“How many people work down here?” Kyler asked.
“Must be…four hundred, Locklear told him.
“Doesn’t that look suspicious?”
“Does what look suspicious?”
“That many people showing up for work in a place that doesn’t look like it would have over forty or fifty employees?”
Potts jumped in on Kyler’s questions. “The only people who notice or care, are the UFO people or the ones who think the Kennedy brothers are both down there being studied by scientists.
“What goes on down here?” Sam asked Locklear.
Locklear seemed to be mulling that question over. “I’m not really sure,” was all he said.
“Where’s the doctor’s office?” Gringo asked, a look of fear and annoyance on his face.
“The infirmary is right down here,” Locklear responded, extending his arm to indicate that they were close.
After a few moments, they reached a metal door that had a keypad on the inner doorjamb. Locklear looked down and squinted his eyes before pressing a series of buttons. No sound came from the keypad. Kyler had expected to hear the different beeps that you heard when you dialed your telephone keypad, but all he saw was the door sliding silently open.
As they crossed the threshold, the lights came on automatically, the light itself almost blinding them. The infirmary was larger than one would think it was from the outside. There were a dozen tables for patients to lie on. At one end of the room sat several desks, each with a computer on top. There was also what looked like a main computer, which surrounded the same type of security desk that was on the first floor. At the other end of the room was a long laboratory table with two microscopes, several petri dishes, and several beakers. Dr. Jekyl would’ve felt right at home in this place.
Kyler had Gringo lay Samantha on top of one of the tables, her buttonless shirt falling open yet again. Kyler had halfway expected Potts to yell something like “I didn’t know that Killamnjaro had two peaks”, but he didn’t. He just continued to stand, soaking wet, glaring at Gringo.
Her body was still but her head slowly moved from side to side. Every once in awhile, she would moan softly. Normally, Kyler would’ve thought she was having fever dreams, but when myths and legends began to enter the picture, normality disappeared in a haze of confusion and befuddlement. He would just have to take everything as it came at him. He would begin to treat her wound like he would any other, but he knew that other factors were going to play a part in how he treated it.
“Could someone find me some alcohol or peroxide?” he asked while removing the handkerchief from her wound. “My guess is that there’s some over in that cabinet over there, if not, check around the room. If this is an infirmary, there’ll be first-aid medicines in it somewhere…and find me something to dry her off with.
“Well, I should go back and start bringing the others down,” Locklear told them, putting his cardkey back into his top pocket. No one said anything in response, so he patted his thighs with his hands and let out a small whistle before awkwardly turning on his heels and leaving the room. Sylvia took Samantha’s hand as Kyler finished removing the handkerchief. Samantha winced a little as the cloth stuck to the now drying blood.
“Found some!” Sam Fong excla
imed from across the room, his head inside a small cupboard.
“Great,” Kyler replied, moving his fingers around the edges of the wound. Christ, it was huge. He placed his thumb and index finger on each side of the gaping hole and gently pulled the skin apart. He could see the outline of her neck muscles. The only thing keeping them from spilling out onto the table was a thin layer of skin which already had a hole in it with a muscle trying to poke through.
“Here it is, Doctor.”
Sam placed a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a bottle of alcohol down on the table next to Samantha, as well as gauze, bandages, swabs, thread, and several small vials of liquid that he wasn’t sure what they were, but he figured if they were with the first-aid supplies, they must be important.
“It looks like you hit the jackpot, Mr. Fong,” Kyler said, picking up the peroxide.
“Let’s hope so,” Sam responded, “And it’s Sam.”
“Then it’s Richard, Sam.”
“Is she gonna make it?” Potts asked from across the room, still searching in cabinets and desks for anything useful.
“Of course, she’ll be all right,” Sylvia said belligerently, clasping Samantha’s hand tighter. Those were the first words she had spoken since they’d gotten in the elevator.
Gringo, for his part, stayed well back from the table, keeping his hands mostly in his pockets and his head down, water dripping off of his hair.
“Aha!” Sam exclaimed again, this time his head in another cabinet. “Towels!”
Thank God, Kyler thought. Maybe some luck was finally starting to come their way after all.
CHAPTER 34
As tired as Kyler was, he was glad that he was in an actual medical room with real tables for patients to lie on, and bandages, and alcohol, and towels. Towels. He had been able to dry his head and hands. There hadn’t been much that he could do about his clothes, but Locklear told them all that there was a laundry room on that floor that many of the people who worked in the bunker for long stretches at a time used. Locklear had retrieved the rest of the group in two trips, and then left with FranAnne and Pvt. Hawkins to find the laundry room, hoping to at least be able to let everyone put their clothes in the dryers. They were all still soaked to the skin and miserable.
Kyler had cleaned and bandaged Samantha’s neck, cleaning it out as best he could. He didn’t want anymore of that last layer of skin to break open. He poked the muscle that was tearing the layer back into her neck and tightly covered the hole with a square of gauze, followed by several bandages, until her neck was completely encircled with sterile, white bandages. One of the small vials that Sam Fong had found contained morphine, but they had not been able to find any syringes or drips to apply it. He had left his medical bag, which had contained at least a dozen syringes back at the base. FranAnne and Sgt. Cohen had neglected it when they were trying to grab whatever they could as they were evacuating the base. Twice, he had almost called out for Nurse Walling for help, but then caught himself, instead asking Zora or Ariella for assistance, while Zack and Locklear remained on the hunt for syringes. There had to be some somewhere. They had almost everything that a doctor in an emergency situation would need, but syringes. He really didn’t want to give Samantha the morphine orally from a liquid vial and he didn’t see any other sort of pain medication anywhere. Whatever doctors worked here must’ve taken the pain medications and syringes, and whatever else that might be needed in an emergency situation with them. It made him feel like a bit of a dolt for having forgotten his. Luckily for him, Samantha was now out cold, and wouldn’t feel anything for a little while.
Next, he turned his attention to Shelly Dixon who was feeding Kayla at the moment, a momentary look of peace on her face. He figured it best not to screw up a good thing by separating baby from breast. Whatever that thing was that existed between mother and child was going on at the moment, and he didn’t want to ruin a good thing while he had it because Shelly and Kayla were there and he didn’t want to drag them into the real world until he absolutely had to. He saw that her cheek was swollen a little from where he’d had to hit her, but not very much, thank God. She really didn’t seem to notice, remember, or even care. Boy, he would’ve made a great boxer, he thought to himself. He’d hit a woman and it hardly showed.
He moved to the next table where Lauren lay flat on her back looking up at the ceiling and frowning. This was the first time since he had met the girl that she had not been smiling, and when Kyler had tried to check on her sutures, she had turned away from him and rolled onto her side, her back to him.
“What is it, Sweetie?” he asked her, not touching her like he normally would, but instead letting her have her moment to be upset.
“The doggie’s hurt,” she whined.
“Lauren…”
“The doggie’s hurt.”
Kyler looked around and saw Joe lying on his belly under a table, head raised and panting as if he were just lying on a patio somewhere on a hot summer’s day.
“I can wait, but the doggie can’t. He’s hurting. I know it.”
Kyler wanted to ask her how she knew Joe was hurting, but he didn’t because he was pretty sure that she would say that he told her so, and she would believe it and so would he. If there was anyone who would be able to communicate with animals, ghosts, or inanimate objects, it would be Lauren O’Hearley.
“Well, tell me if you start to feel any pain, Lauren, I really need to know.” He wasn’t surprised that she didn’t answer. She wasn’t going to be happy until Joe was taken care of, but he had to take care of the humans first. That’s just the way it was.
He walked over to Rob Olsen who was asleep on one of the tables. That was the most serene he’d seen the man since the night they met. Just like the stranger with no memory, he wondered what a man who had gone completely mental dreamed about. He was glad that Rob’s body had told him that he was exhausted since he didn’t have any sedatives other than aspirin that didn’t need a syringe. He reminded himself to check the rooms on each side of the infirmary when he got the chance. He would have to do it himself, because everyone who wasn’t sick was busy, except for Gringo and Sylvia.
He took one last look at Rob Olsen, and then moved down to Michael Blum who was grimacing in pain, but as usual, was trying not to show it. He was lying flat on his back with several pillows underneath his broken leg, staring at the ceiling. Good God, what had this kid’s parents taught him? Show no fear. Show no pain. Show no emotion at all. He could tell that boy wanted to scream, but repressed it, and Kyler couldn’t blame him considering everything this child had been through in the past two days.
“Ya’ hurting?” Kyler asked him.
“A little,” he answered, trying to look tough, but having a lot of difficulty.
“You know, there’s nothing wrong with showing your feelings, Buddy…mental or physical.”
“I’m all right,” he replied, looking up into the doctor’s eyes. “Really.”
“Are you sure, ‘cause you don’t look like you’re feeling too good, my friend? Well, either way, after I check you out, I’m going to go see if I can find some painkillers for you so you’ll…”
“I’m fine, Doctor,” Michael interrupted almost sounding like the brat he’d known the day before. “If you really want to do something…take care of Joe. He saved our lives, you know.”
“Yes, I…”
Like Lauren before him, he turned his head away from him.
“It looks like no one’s gonna be happy till you patch up that dog,” Sgt. Cohen said, coming up behind him.
Kyler walked over to the empty table that the dog lay under, still lying on its belly, and still panting, every once in a while instinctively licking his wound, the blood crusting around it. He bent down and peered under the table.
“How ya’ doin’, Fella?” he asked.
Joe looked up at him, the pupils behind his golden eyes larger than they had been before, because the underside of the table was shaded from the bright fluoresce
nt lights. Damn that dog and those eyes. They could melt even the hardest heart.
“Had a rough night, Boy?” he asked the dog, almost expecting an answer.
He snapped his fingers under the table. Joe immediately stood up and walked to his hand, which he sniffed hardily before giving it one good lick. Kyler scratched him on top of the head and behind the ears, which he could tell was his favorite spot, because the dog tilted his head and moved in a couple of inches so that he could guide the doctor’s fingers to just the right spot.
“You know that I don’t have anything to put you under with?” he told him.
The dog looked at him as if to say “that’s all right, Doc, just give it your best shot”.
“Sergeant, could you give me a hand, please?”
“I’m on it.”
With this, the doctor and the MP picked up the dog, careful not to touch the wound on his side, which was tough because the loose flap of skin covered Joe’s entire rib cage. Damn, that creature had massive claws.
“Well, somebody’s been feeding him. He must weigh eighty pounds,” Cohen grunted.
“And all of it muscle,” grunted Kyler as well, putting his knee under the dog to help him lift him onto the table.
The two men had to stand on their toes just to make sure he cleared the table. When they set him down, they both began to breathe heavy. Once on the table, the dog lay back down on his belly, the cool steel soothing him. After a few seconds, he had stopped panting all together.
By this time, Lauren and Michael had both sat up and were watching Kyler inspecting his latest patient. Kyler checked the gash above Joe’s right eye first. It was deep but only about two inches long. The dog must’ve been very quick on his feet. It looked like the werewolf had been going for his eye and had just missed by a hair. It would only take a few stitches, but for right now, he would just clean it and get to the main wound. He pushed Joe onto his side. The dog pushed against him for a while, nervous about what was going on, but after a moment, seemed to resign itself to the fact the doctor was trying to help him, and laid down, at first keeping its head up, but finally laying it down as if to tell the doctor that it was okay, just do your thing and I’ll just lie here till its over.