He paused there, the door cracked ever so slightly open by the barrel of his rifle, and he realized he was waiting for something. The right time, perhaps? He felt a gentle squeeze on his shoulder, and it was as if Sarah could read his mind.
“Now.”
He opened the door and slipped inside Level 0.
The floor was dark but for a small corner at the far end of the corridor. There was a bed there, two men standing beside it, their backs to them. They appeared to be tending to someone in the bed.
Could it be her?
He pushed those thoughts aside as he crossed the linoleum floor, slinking along in the dark. Thirty feet away. Then twenty. Then a sudden clang behind him. He turned his head in time to see Sarah draw her arm tight against her body. She must have bumped into something. The sound drew the attention of the men, who began rotating toward them. As they did so, a gap opened up between them, giving Adam a clear look at the person in the bed.
Rachel.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Shit.
A goddamned tremor had wrested her arm from her control, slamming it into the metal rail of one of the empty beds just as they passed it. Another second, and she would have been clear. A lesson from one of her sergeants, way back during Officer Candidate School, snapped into focus.
“You cannot change the past,” he’d said. “You can only deal with the consequences.”
She grabbed Adam and yanked him down between two of the beds as the men opened fire on them. They took cover behind a telemetry machine that was pushed up against the wall.
“That’s Rachel!” he gushed. “It’s her!”
“Okay,” she said as calmly as she could. “Let’s keep our heads. If we fire now, we might hit her.”
He nodded, his face lit up and panic-stricken. He was in shock, or something akin to it, and she had to bring him back to the reality of the situation. The room filled with the staccato pulse of gunfire. They needed a plan, or they’d be dead within seconds, and this whole trip would’ve been for nothing.
She had to draw them away from Rachel’s bedside. Across the aisle was another row of beds, a dozen or so. If she could create a diversion, she might be able to give Adam an opening to slide in and grab his daughter.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I’m going to buy you a few seconds to slide across the aisle and hide. On three.”
“Two.”
“One.”
She pointed her gun skyward and squeezed off three short bursts; the ceiling above the men crumbled, showering them with dust and pulverized drywall and briefly distracting them.
“Go, go, go!”
Adam scampered across the open floor, and her heart stopped until he had resumed cover behind a bed. Behind her, the door to the stairwell opened, revealing the silhouette of another armed soldier. She turned and fired at him, a clip of bullets stitching the wall but missing her target. The fusillade was enough to push him back toward safer pastures, though, and the door swung closed again.
Now they had two fronts open on them. Ahead, the two shooters crept toward them, using the beds for cover. Adam was pinned against the wall, drawing heavy fire. Goddamn it, she’d forgotten how fast combat could spin out of control, especially this kind of close-quarters fighting like she’d experienced overseas. She scanned the room for inspiration, looking for anything that might help their cause.
She unplugged the telemetry machine and gave it a light shove; it rolled smoothly on its wheels, but it had real heft to it. She ran the same test on the bed behind her. Compared to the telemetry machine, it was as light as a feather.
She crouched down close behind the machine and started pushing it across the floor, picking up speed as she did so. The machine crashed into one bed, then another, then a third, and the room became a disco floor of spinning hospital beds. When she felt like she’d accelerated enough, she let go and dropped to the ground in a prone firing position. The shooters popped up to avoid the runaway machine, exposing themselves just long enough for Sarah. From less than ten feet, she fired two more bursts from the gun, striking both men in the upper legs.
They went down in a heap, dropping their weapons and writhing in pain on the ground. Sarah moved in and shot each of them in the head. With those two out of the way, she turned her attention back to the door. It was propped open, ever so slightly, a strip of light from the stairwell cutting an angle across the floor. A black barrel was poking through, a cold, steel snake looking for prey. She fired again, but it was just a diversion. There was no other escape route; they could simply wait them out. She turned back toward Rachel, who had climbed out of the bed and was hunkered down between it and the wall. The look on her face appeared to be one of disbelief.
“Adam, grab her and let’s go!”
She hunkered down and prayed they’d be able to find a way out.
That’s what it had come down to.
Prayer.
#
Adam stepped gingerly toward his daughter, who looked at him like he was a ghost. He wanted to scoop her up and hold her tight, the way he had the first time he’d laid eyes on her, the day she was born. Much like he’d been unable to fathom ever seeing her while Nina had been pregnant with her, it had been almost impossible these last few months to visualize an actual reunion with her. He thought about it, he dreamed about it, but it seemed nothing more than idle fantasy.
“Dad?”
“Hey, chicken wing.”
She smiled and clambered to her feet. They hugged, a quick, fierce embrace. He never wanted to let her go, but he knew he had to. The road out of here was going to be harder than the one in. In fact, this rescue attempt may have done nothing but significantly shorten all their life expectancies.
“How the hell did you find me?” she asked.
“It’s a long story,” he said. “We gotta get you out of here.”
“There are others,” she said. “Other women-”
“I know,” Adam said. “We saved as many as we could. But we have to go now. Sarah!”
“We’ve got a problem,” Sarah said. “They’ve got the door blocked.”
“Shit.”
“How you doing on ammo?”
He checked.
“Half a clip, one spare.”
“Drop your weapons!” called out a stern voice.
Adam turned to find three men standing there. All wore tuxes, all splattered with blood, and all were armed. The man in the center appeared to be the leader. He was a big man, broad in chest, silver-haired. One of the other men spoke into a headset.
A moment later, the door to the stairwell opened, and two more armed men entered the room. Sarah seemed to understand that the battle was over, and although she kept her weapon trained on the new arrivals, the ones she’d tried desperately to pin down, she did not fire.
She screamed, a deep, plaintive howl that told Adam that their goose was all but cooked.
Adam expected a smile, perhaps an evil smirk from the man. The look of a man who knew he’d won. The master villain, his devious plan preserved. But instead, he began the discussion with an introduction and a crude question, one that suggested he was totally befuddled by this bizarre turn of events.
“My name is Miles Chadwick,” the man said. “Who the fuck are you?”
Adam considered the query for a moment and then replied with the only answer he could think of.
“It doesn’t matter,” Adam said.
“It does to me,” Chadwick said.
Adam didn’t care anymore. If they were dead, so be it. He’d done it. He’d found his little girl. Rachel knew he’d never given up on her. Maybe it wasn’t going to finish with the happy ending, but that was OK. Just seeing her, even if it was just for a few minutes, had been better than years of stumbling around a plague-scarred world, wondering what had become of her, replaying her last voicemail to him over and over again, even long after he’d forgotten the details.
“So it really was you,” Adam said.
“
What was me?”
Adam glared at him.
“Yes. It was me.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, why?”
The two newcomers filled in behind them, the proverbial noose tightening around their necks.
“I don’t think I need to explain myself to a trespasser.”
“Fine,” he said. “I guess it doesn’t even matter.”
“I must say, though, I’m terribly intrigued by you,” Chadwick said.
“I’m an intriguing kind of guy.”
“Oh, you’re a cowboy type,” Chadwick said. “Mouthing off. Disrespectful when the only thing that might save you is some goddamned respect. See, the world is already better off without your kind. Again, I have to ask, who are you?”
Adam held Chadwick’s gaze, careful not to look at Rachel.
“Were you here for her?” he said, nodding toward Rachel. “Do you know her?”
“No,” Adam said. “Just looking for a place to stay warm for the winter.”
“Really,” Chadwick said. “Well, I would very much like to believe you, my friend, but I’m unfortunately cursed with this obscenely high IQ. It prevents me from buying bullshit stories like this one you’re selling.”
“Sorry you feel that way,” he said.
Keep the conversation going, Adam thought.
“What was it like?”
“What was what like?”
“Killing everyone.”
“You think I enjoyed it?” he asked, his voice cutting now, as though he’d run it across a knife sharpener.
A nerve. He’d touched a nerve.
“You didn’t?”
“I’m not saying the outcome wasn’t what we’d planned.”
“Again, to what end?”
Chadwick ignored him, instead turning to one of his confederates.
“Bring me the girls,” he said.
The man to his right, to Adam’s left, stepped forward and grabbed Rachel by the elbow. As he did so, Sarah made her move. Taking advantage of this odd intermission, she turned and cut down the two soldiers behind her with a final burst from her machine pistol. Rachel howled and wrenched her arm free from the other man, who began scrambling for his own weapon. Rachel lost her balance, spinning around to her left, crashing into Chadwick’s midsection, and the pair crashed to the ground.
Adam fired a burst, but the fusillade flew wild, burying into the wall beyond. He fired again, but the clip had run dry, and the trigger snapped impotently against the guard. The surviving guard was moving now, faster than Adam could decide what to do in light of his empty weapon. The man squeezed a burst from his gun, which missed. He held the barrel like a baseball bat and swung it at the shooter’s head. The stock clocked solidly against the man’s temple, the sickening sound of his skull cracking making Adam’s skin crawl. He crumpled to the ground in a heap.
“Take another step, and she dies!”
This froze the room.
From the corner of his eye, Adam saw Chadwick’s arm securely under Rachel’s neck, the Uzi against her skull. He stumbled backwards, his hands up in surrender.
“Guns on the floor,” Chadwick said. “Slide them toward me.”
Adam looked at Sarah, whose gun was still up.
“You hurt one hair on her head,” Sarah said, “and I’ll splatter your fucking brains all over this room.”
“Yes, that does appear to be the case, doesn’t it? Except…”
“Except what?” Sarah asked.
“I doubt dear old dad wants it to come to that,” Chadwick said, nodding toward Adam.
Adam’s jaw clenched; he could feel his teeth squeezing together.
“It just hit me,” Chadwick said. “The resemblance, I must say, is remarkable.”
Again, Adam said nothing, his eyes locked on Rachel’s.
“And both of you, immune to the virus,” he continued. “Incredible. You’re the first blood relatives I’ve encountered who survived.”
Adam had been curious about this. So it had just been dumb luck that had brought them to this point. If he had succumbed to the plague, Rachel would have simply disappeared into this new world, subject to the whims of this madman for however long her life lasted. And if she had died, or if he’d never gotten her message, he’d have wandered aimlessly about the empty world. He never would have met Sarah.
That was the nature of the world. Events, lives, civilizations, turning on random chance. A guy forgets to set his alarm and misses the plane that crashes into the Atlantic Ocean. They stop to loot a UPS truck and they cross paths with Nadia. Roll the dice on humanity a hundred times, and Chadwick never brings the Medusa virus to market on ninety-nine of those rolls. But this one time, it had hit. And in this empty world, where connections were simultaneously fragile and profound, you’d need to be able to deal with the randomness of events. Who lived. Who died. Who suffered. Who thrived. Even bad guys had to deal with it. After all, random chance had brought this monster to the brink of ruin.
And when you accepted that, you realized there was nothing to be afraid of.
He lifted his gun back up.
“I’ll kill her,” Chadwick said.
“I don’t think you will,” Adam said.
Chadwick backed away from them, edging closer toward the door to the stairwell. Adam and Sarah followed as the situation reached a certain kind of stasis. There was an endgame here, Adam was certain of it. There was no way Chadwick would get out of this alive. But he wouldn’t want anyone else to escape either. And they were in the one place where he could make sure that happened.
It all seemed choreographed now, the four of them moving in tandem, Chadwick’s head bobbing from side to side as he continued using Rachel as a human shield. There was no way to draw a clear shot on Chadwick, so Adam stayed focused on his daughter. Her face was like stone, her eyes sharp. She had to be afraid; hell, he was. He hated that there was nothing he could do about it. He hated that he’d been the one to put her in this predicament, noble as his motivation might have been.
Random rolls of the dice.
They were in the stairwell now, descending into the bowels of the Citadel. Down past Level 1, the stairs echoing with their footfalls but nothing else. No one spoke. There was nothing either Adam or Sarah could do but follow, wait until Chadwick had delivered them to the last stop on this crazy ride.
Another minute brought them to Biosafety Level 2, where things began to get interesting. Here you had your influenza, your Lyme disease, your antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The descent was adding fuel to his already overheated heart, the steps carrying them down into a pathologic hellhole. Downward to Level 3. Yellow fever, SARS, tuberculosis. Scary stuff.
Then Level 4.
The big boys.
The major leagues.
Ebola. Marburg. Lassa. Smallpox. Hemorrhagic fever.
And their spiritual leader.
Medusa.
Adam was the last one on the platform, the big red 4 painted on the door virtually screaming at him. This was Medusa’s dark birthplace. He could almost feel its presence, its shadow over them. This might as well have been the gate of hell, because hell was what had spewed forth from that door.
“It’s not every day you get to witness something so momentous,” Chadwick said. “What did you do before?”
“I was a doctor,” Adam said, his eyes locked on Rachel.
“A man of science. Splendid! Specialty?”
“OB/GYN.”
“How appropriate,” Chadwick said.
“How do you figure?”
“You shepherded life into the old world. I shepherded the new world into existence. We’re like mirror images of each other. Two sides of the same coin.”
Adam was dumbfounded.
“Are you really giving me the ‘we’re not so different, you and me’ speech?”
Chadwick laughed a little.
“Yes, that does seem a bit clichéd. But then again, how does a cliché become a cliché?”
Ad
am ignored him, his attention now focused on the door separating them from Level 4.
“Rachel, be a dear and type in the following code for me,” Chadwick said.
“Go to hell,” she said.
“Type the numbers I say, or I will shoot you.”
“Then you’ll die too, you piece of shit,” Rachel said.
“Do what he says, Rachel!” Adam snapped.
Rachel sighed and dropped her head as Chadwick ticked off the code.
“Five. Nine. One. Six. One. Seven. Two. Four. Four. Three.”
Rachel mouthed I’m sorry to her father and then typed in the code. The locks disengaged with a muffled thump, and the door slid open.
“Do come in, won’t you?” Chadwick asked, with the verve of a proud dinner host.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Adam followed them inside Level 4, Sarah trailing close behind. He heard her curse under her breath. He knew she was thinking the same thing he was. If they could just get a clean shot at him, this could all be over. But Chadwick was being careful with his positioning. The risk was too great. They’d have to continue this stalemate until an opportunity presented itself.
Level 4’s anteroom was unremarkable in every way; there was nothing to suggest that death itself resided here, that there was no more dangerous place on the planet. There were two lockers, a bench and a sink. They followed through to the next room, the door sticking a little thanks to the negative air pressure, which drew air into the room. You always wanted air flowing into a Level 4 hot zone, not the other way around.
Blue light swirled about the room; this was ultraviolet light, a defensive measure that killed any viruses escaping from the lab, shattering them at a subatomic level. A second door stood on the other side of the small foyer. The room contained a decontamination shower, a bar of soap, a bottle of shampoo. Deeper into the lab Chadwick drew them, into the third room, the last safe room before entering the lab itself. Adam and Sarah followed, their guns up and ready, but Chadwick was still using Rachel as a shield.
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