Kings of Carrion

by Keri Lake

  Lips stretching to a smile, he blinks out a tear and pulls me to his face again, as he lowers me back to my feet. The metallic flavor I’ve longed for fills my mouth, and I would sacrifice every ounce of breath inside of me to stay in this moment forever.

  The growling of the dogs breaks my trance, and I turn to see Cadmus approaching, covered in blood and limping, his hand shielding what must be an injury at his side. “Cadmus!” My heart soars at the sight of him, but I don’t leave Valdys’s side, not ever again.

  Brandon climbs out of the shelf where he’s remained hidden, and Cadmus gives him a nod.

  Valdys snaps his fingers again, and the dogs growling ceases as before.

  “Good to see you, Brother,” Cadmus says, his hand outstretched toward Valdys.

  “Wish I could say the same.” Valdys pulls him in, patting him on the back as the two men embrace, but when he pulls away, his eyes are darker than before, brimming with fury. He slams a fist into Cadmus’s face, kicking him back a step. “What the fuck were you thinking bringing her here?”

  Chuckling as he wipes the blood from his lip, Cadmus shakes his head. “Don’t act like you have no idea how fucking persuasive she is. There was no keeping her away from this place. From you.”

  Valdys flicks his gaze to me and back to Cadmus. “You’re fools to come back here. Do you have any idea what runs through these halls? What lurks in the shadows?”

  Cadmus nods toward the dogs standing behind Valdys. “Looks like you’ve made friends with a few.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say flatly, interrupting the two. “It’s as Cadmus said. Nothing would’ve kept me from you. And we’re here now.”

  “How? We’ve searched everywhere for a way out. Every hallway. Every door. Every point of entry is sealed.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Atticus. He’s another Alpha who was sent to the chambers.” Valdys glances around the room. “The lights flicked on, and we thought something had glitched. That the place was about to blow, or something.”

  “How …. How did you survive?”

  “One of the Legion officers who escorted us down. When the alarms went off, he let us go. Just a kid.”

  “What was his name?” Brandon asks from behind, his voice thick with curiosity.

  “Everett.”

  “And is he alive? Do you know if he’s alive?” The urgency in Brandon’s voice tells me it was his brother who saved Valdys.

  Valdys lowers his gaze, brows flickering. “We found him about a month ago. He’d fallen into an elevator shaft and broken his neck.”

  Rubbing his hands back and forth over his skull, Brandon whimpers and crouches to the ground.

  I go to him and kneel at his side, wrapping my arms around him, as he sobs in my embrace. “I’m so sorry, Brandon.”

  “It was quick, then?” His muffled voice carries a chord of pain that vibrates his muscles. “He died instantly?”

  “I would assume. The mutations didn’t get to him, from what I could see.”

  Lifting his head, Brandon sniffles. “Good. A merciful death, then.”

  “He was your brother.” At Brandon’s silent nod, Valdys lowers his gaze. “I’m grateful to him for what he did.”

  “We need to get out of here.” Cadmus removes his hand to reveal a blossom of red at his stomach, and he seems to be resolved with the wound, as he doesn’t bother to cover it again. “Tanks are reading high pressure. Kenny thinks they’re going to blow.”

  “Yes, we have to meet the others at the front entrance. He’s going to unseal the doors.”

  Frowning, Valdys shakes his head. “Unseal the doors? And let all those things out of here?”

  “I’m getting you out of here. That’s all that matters to me.” Pushing to my feet, I twist toward him. “Regardless of the consequences. Now, let’s go.”

  “I’m not leaving Atticus.”

  “Then, lets get him and get out of here.”

  “What’s happening down there?” Kenny’s voice carries more tension than before. “I’m getting dangerously high readings right now. You need to get your asses in gear.”

  “We have a small detour to make first,” Cadmus answers back. “We were wrong. The stubborn prick is alive, after all.”

  “Whatever it is you have planned, you better make it quick. Those tanks sit on the other side of the wall where you’re at, and they’re about two hundred liters a piece. If they explode, they’ll displace the oxygen on that floor. You’ll all die of asphyxiation.”

  Chapter 26

  Wren

  Breathing a little easier than before, I watch as Six drops from the ceiling vent to a lab bench, where glass crackles beneath his boots.

  He reaches up to help Jed through, the two having decided he should go first, and both perform a second sweep of the room, before exiting out through the door. Another sweep of the hallway shows no sign of the mutations anywhere, none that I can see through the green haze of the camera, anyway. The two make their way to the opposite end of the corridor, and as they push through the door of the stairwell, they’re back on the path to the first floor where they entered this hell.

  Though they’re out of immediate harm’s way, I’m far from feeling easy about the trek back. I won’t feel at complete ease until I’m once again lying beneath the stars en route to the east coast, with Six at my side.

  “How’d he do it?” Gregor asks. Feet kicked up on the desk, he lounges back in his chair beside me. “Josef. How’d he die?”

  It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of him as anything but Papa. I forget that he was a colleague to all these men, these progenitors of this place. “Suicide.”

  Staring down at his drink, he nods. “Can’t say I haven’t given it thought before.”

  “He was bitten. Otherwise, I doubt he would’ve considered such a thing.”

  “We’ve all considered such a thing.” He tips back the amber fluid, probably whiskey, from the smell of it. Papa used to drink it from time to time. “A few decades in this world, and you long for the next.”

  On the screen before me, Six and Jed reach the first floor where they encountered the cat. Six breathes easy, the lesser shaking of the camera telling me his strides are more casual and calm.

  Still, I won’t allow myself to be swept into the illusion that they’re safe, not until he’s at my side again.

  “The tunnels … they extend beyond Calico in the other direction?”

  “Yes.”

  “To what?”

  Snorting, Gregor removes a cigar from his pocket, snipping the end of it off before he shoves it into his mouth. He lights it up and takes a few puffs, not bothering to make eye contact when he says, “I wondered when you were going to ask me that.”

  A tingling sensation zings along my spine, as I watch him stare off toward the opposite side of the room.

  “You ask a very confidential question.”

  “Well, seeing as we’ve sent a rather large group down into those tunnels, including the father of my child, perhaps you can enlighten me.”

  Another drag of his cigar, and he blows the plumes into the air while staring up at the ceiling, anywhere but back at me, it seems. “Are you familiar with Dugway Proving Grounds?”

  I shake my head and shrug. “Vaguely. Maybe in my reading, but assume I haven’t.”

  “Prior to the Dredge, it was a highly classified military facility, located just outside of Salt Lake City. The site of biological and chemical warfare testing.”

  “You mean weapons? As in using diseases as weapons?”

  “Yes, exactly. Due to a number of attempts to break into the facility, the research lab was relocated to the Mojave Desert. Any guesses as to why?”

  “This is where you said you first stumbled upon the Dredge, right?”

  “Correct. While excavating the site, we stumbled upon something that, in hindsight, we should’ve left alone.”

  “What?”

  “A network of tunnels that ext
end hundreds of feet below the surface. Intricate little caverns that seem to have existed over a span of centuries. A team was sent down to investigate them, which comprised of archeologists, paleontologists, biologists … some of the most brilliant minds of our time. When we didn’t hear from them, we sent another team in after them, and when they didn’t surface, we sent some of our best military down for search and rescue. None of them were seen, or heard from, again.”

  “The caverns are at the other end of the tunnel.”

  “The entrance, yes.”

  “And did you ever figure out where they went? What happened to them?”

  “No. After the third expedition, the entrance was sealed. The evidence erased, as if it never existed.” His brows knit together, and he sits looking thoughtful for a moment. “What’s interesting, is that every person sent down since has reported through the walkie-talkie of having seen women, or children, running through the tunnels. Of course, they, too, disappear, leaving behind some eerie audio recordings. In fact, I don’t know of anyone who’s actually returned from those tunnels. Cameras worked down there at one time, but they’ve since become non-functioning.”

  At his words, I swing my attention back to the screen, where Jed and Six have exited the research lab and are passing through the busted door where they first entered. The moment they breach the threshold, they divest themselves of the hazmat suits, tossing them onto a pile at the entrance. Six clips the camera he wore atop his head to a harness across his chest.

  “You wouldn’t have sent Jed down there, if you thought that was true,” I say.

  “You’re forgetting. I had no choice in the matter. My farewell this morning came with the understanding that I might not see him again.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before? Why now?”

  “As I said, you never asked. And would it have mattered?” He shifts his attention toward the screen. “When someone wants something bad enough, everything else becomes irrelevant.”

  “Well, my farewell didn’t share that same understanding. So I guess that makes your creepy little warning irrelevant to me, too.”

  Chapter 27

  Cali

  Valdys stares down at our clasped hands as he leads me down the hallway, following after the dogs ahead of us. He lifts our hands to his lips, as he’s done a few times on the way, as if he’s periodically checking to make sure I don’t disappear into whatever hallucination he thought I was before. “It boils my blood that he brought you to this place. But I can’t deny, I feel alive again just seeing you.”

  “Cadmus insisted that I stay back.” I glance over my shoulder to where the Alpha brings up the rear of the group, his eyes on Valdys and I as we lead them down the corridor. “I refused.”

  “Still stubborn.” His cheek twitches as if he means to smile, but he doesn’t. “Stay by my side in this place,” he says, and a thrill winds in my stomach, as the protective Valdys I remember bleeds through his exceptionally rougher exterior. “I don’t want you out of my sight.”

  “I don’t endeavor to be out of your sight again.” Smiling, I nod toward the dogs. “How did you tame them?”

  A crack echoes down the hall from behind us, and I twist to see debris flying into the corridor. Glass shatters, and the door flies off the hinges. The wall surrounding its frame crumbles with the impact. A second explosion immediately follows the first, creating a plume of dust at the other end of the hallway.

  “The tanks!” Pulling my shirt over my face in a futile attempt to block the expelled gases and fragments, I allow Valdys to tug me down the hallway, where he slams into one of the nearby rooms.

  The group files in after us until we’re trapped inside what appears to be some kind of large examination room, with steel countertops, surgical-looking tools I remember from my many visits to the operating room, and gurneys lying tipped and broken.

  Striding toward the back, Valdys swings back a large steel door on where a man built like an Alpha sits against the wall with a bloodied piece of fabric tied to his leg. The pointed end of a broomstick that looks to have been carved into a spear remains trained on us, a good indication we startled him, until he huffs a breath and lowers his weapon.

  “’The hell was the noise?” the stranger asks in a gruff voice, wincing when he pushes up, as if to stand. “And where’d you find the fresh pulses?”

  I’m guessing fresh pulses refers to us.

  “The place is blowing to shit. These are my friends. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

  The room is small, and filled with blankets and cans of food. Bottles of sterile water, presumably what they’ve scavenged from the labs, lie discarded, and some sit stacked.

  Wrapping my arms across my body, I shiver against a sudden chill. “What is this place?”

  “Place they store bodies, I’m guessing. Pretty sure this is a morgue.” Valdys crouches down, allowing his friend to wrap an arm around him, and he lifts him up to his feet.

  The Alpha flinches, but doesn’t moan, or protest, with the movement, as if he’s had to do this a number of times already. His eyes fall on me once he’s upright, and if I weren’t already accustomed to an Alpha’s curious stare, the weight and intensity of his gaze might’ve had me shrinking into myself.

  In diverting my own stare, I notice his bloodstained bandage again, and a lump sticking up that, for my stomach’s sake, I hope isn’t bone. “What happened?”

  “Supply run. Mutations cornered us in one of the rooms and attacked. Tore a nice chunk of his leg, which’s been slow to heal. The dogs held them off while we escaped, but we lost one.”

  “Two now,” Cadmus says. “That was before I knew they were your pets.”

  “They’ve kept us alive, and in turn, we make sure they’re fed. They’ve been loyal and protective, so far, but I’m not foolish enough to think that we won’t be next on the menu, when the food runs out.”

  “So, um. When was the last time you fed them?” Brandon asks, wringing his shirt as he stares off at one of the dogs, who licks its chops as it stares back at him.

  “This morning. Found some carcasses up on the sixth floor.”

  “You know there’s a buffet on the first floor,” I add, glancing around at all of the tools they’ve gathered inside the small space--saws and scalpels they’ve armed themselves with.

  “We’ve avoided first floor. Been hearing some shit through the vents of this place. Seeing things we shouldn’t be seeing.”

  “Like what?”

  Exchanging a quick glance with Cadmus, Valdys frowns and shakes his head. “Things that can’t possibly be there.”

  “Well, you’re shit out of luck, because that’s where the front entrance is, and that’s where we’re headed.” Cadmus lifts a can of beans from the floor, grimacing before tossing it back onto the pile.

  I don’t think any of us miss our daily meal of watered down soup with beans.

  “You guys all right?” Kenny’s voice interrupts through the walkie-talkie.

  “Yeah,” Cadmus answers, glancing around the room. “We’re in some kind of morgue at the end of the hallway. How the fuck do we get out of here without suffocating to death?”

  “There’s a dumbwaiter elevator in that room. Looks like the tanks blew through the ceiling into the upper levels, so you should be good to take it down to the second floor. Once there, take the stairwell back to the first. I’m working on the code to open the entrance.”

  “Working on the code?” I ask, frowning.

  “Yeah, so, there really wasn’t a way to open them once they sealed. Kinda defeats the purpose of sealing the doors, you know?”

  Huffing a breath, I shake my head, resigning myself to one calamity at a time. “Okay, to the dumbwaiter elevator. Let’s go.”

  “One thing. The elevator can only hold two, max. You guys will have to go two at a time.”

  Cadmus drags his hand down his face and groans. “For fuck’s sake, any other disaster you can throw at us? How about an oncoming h
orde?”

  “Um. Well, it seems the explosion has drawn some activity. I’m catching movement on the floors above and below, so be careful and quiet.”

  “Okay, two at a time. Cadmus, how about if you and Brandon scope it first?” I glance over at the newcomer hanging off Valdys, his build as massive as the rest of them. No way the two would fit together. “We’ll send him down to them, and then the two of us will go last?”

  “You’ll need to hurry. It’s hard to say how quickly those gases will diffuse throughout the corridor.” Kenny’s words add a boost of stress to my already frayed nerves.

  There’s no way I’m going to let asphyxiation separate me from Valdys, after what we’ve gone through.

  Through a swinging door that separates the morgue from some storage area at the back of the room, we find the large, commercial-sized dumbwaiter, similar to the one I saw in the surgical unit used to transport med carts up from the pharmacy. While Cadmus and Brandon should fit, I was right about two Alphas at once.

  The first two hop inside, and I have to stifle a chuckle at how cramped they look with their legs tangled into one another.

  “You lay a hand on my fucking leg, and I’ll break your fingers,” Cadmus says, as I slide the door on them. I push the button for the second floor and watch as the elevator sinks below us, lower and lower, until it cruises to a stop. After a short pause, it sets into motion again, rising up from below, and comes to a stop in front of me once more.

  Valdys helps his friend inside, exerting little effort.

  The man doesn’t seem to like being babied, with the way he nudges the other Alpha’s arm away. “I’m all right.”

  “I’ll send one of the dogs with you. Just in case.” Valdys whistles and guides one of the beastly looking animals into the elevator, where it settles on the other side of the man. Obedient. As if they’ve done nothing but train them this whole time. Once again, I send the elevator back down to the second floor and wait.