by Sam Cheever
Jealousy warred with joy as Elena moved quickly around the room, grabbing stuff up and shoving some of it into a pack she had strapped to her back. “You think Franco’s here?”
Elena gave her a bright smile. “Of course he is. You don’t think he’d abandon you do you? The poor sap’s clearly in love.”
Nici swallowed that shocking revelation whole, thinking that maybe she was dreaming. “He’s not...”
Elena threw a white coat at her. “No time to argue. Put that on. We need to get out of here.” She tugged the straps of the backpack off her shoulders and dug around inside, pulling out a red wig. “This too. And these.” She handed Nici a huge pair of glasses and then held up a pair of yoga pants. “These aren’t really business dress but it was the best I could do under the circumstances.”
She moved to the door as Nici’s hands pulled clumsily at the pants, finally grabbing the wig and smoothing it over her head. As she positioned the ugly glasses on her nose she glanced toward the other gurney. “We can’t leave Betty here.”
Elena kept her gaze on the hallway as she asked, “Who’s Betty?”
“The girl on that gurney. I promised I’d help her.”
Elena turned a sad gaze on the teen. She shook her head. “It’s too late for her, I’m afraid. But I promise we’ll find out who did that to her.”
Nici dug in her heels. “I’m not leaving without her.”
Elena pulled a black wig over her head and tugged it straight. She shook her head as she jammed some kind of mouthpiece into her mouth. It transformed her pretty face, making her look like she had buck teeth and giving her a slight lisp. “Okay, you win. We’ll take her with. But she’s going to slow us down and we’re probably going to get caught.”
Nici moved over to the gurney and kicked off the wheel brake. “If Franco’s here we’ll be okay.”
Her sister shoved her arms into the backpack straps and grabbed the clipboard from the gurney as Nici pushed it closer. “We’re medical personnel. Head down, walk fast. If anybody stops us or asks any questions you let me do the talking. Okay?”
Aside from being really bossy, Elena seemed as though she knew her way around the place so Nici nodded, happy to have someone else take charge while she worked through the last vestiges of whatever the guy in the white coat had given her. But that didn’t stop her mind from roiling with questions as they hurried down the first hallway and took a turn on two wheels.
People flooded past them as they traveled, making Nici feel like they were salmon swimming upstream while the rest of the world swam the other way.
Unfortunately the fact that they were heading the wrong way couldn’t help but put them under notice eventually. A guard with a long gun in his hands stopped on the opposite side of the hall and glared over at them. “Hey there! Where are you taking that gurney?”
To Nici’s horror Elena laughed and said, “Morgue. This one’s deader than a doornail.”
Her head flew up but Elena grabbed her hand under the gurney, squeezing it hard.
“Just leave her here. We’ve been ordered to evacuate.”
“Oh. Okay. Sure.” Elena smiled at the guard and he blinked, glowering their way. He jerked the gun down the hall. “Go on now.”
Elena tugged Nici’s hand and Nici dug in. Before she knew what she was doing, Nici was lifting her gaze, looking the guard in the eye. “I can’t just leave her here. It’s disrespectful.”
The man’s gaze sharpened and he eyed her carefully for a moment before the rifle came around. “Hey, you’re wearing a gown under that coat.”
Elena sighed, dropping Nici’s hand. “Now look what you’ve done.”
Without warning, Elena kicked out, her foot connecting with the side of the guard’s knee. There was an awful cracking sound and he yelled as the knee buckled underneath him.
As he fell, Elena grabbed the rifle and slammed the butt of it into the guy’s nose. He went down hard, blood pouring from his nose.
“That’s my favorite move too,” Nici said on a grin.
Elena shook her head. “You’re very stubborn, you know that?”
“Hey, you two. What’s wrong with that guard?”
They swung around to see two more men with guns at the other end of the hall. Having learned her lesson about drawing attention to herself, Nici glanced at Elena. “They’re all yours.”
Elena rolled her eyes before transforming her face into a mask of horror. She looked at the two guards. “I don’t know. He was just standing here and he fell. We were trying to figure out what to do with him.”
The guards moved down the hall, dark eyes hostile. “You shouldn’t be here. We’re evacuating the bunker.”
Elena nodded. “Yeah. I got that. But we were trying to help this guy.”
The guard stopped in front of his colleague and eyed the puddle of blood beneath the guy’s crooked nose. “Did you see an intruder here?” the second guard asked. “A big guy with black hair and green eyes?”
Nici’s pulse picked up. Franco! He’d come after her. Pulling the front of her white coat closed over her gown, she looked up and shook her head. “Just us and that guy.”
The first guard straightened and looked them over. His eyes were mean and his face was covered in pockmarks. His thin lips tightened as he saw how Nici was dressed. The other guy moved around Nici and looked at the girl on the gurney. “Where were you going with this one? She’s supposed to be in the quarantine hall.”
Both guards stepped backward, clearly not happy to have been so close to a contagious patient. “Oh, really?” Elena said with a shrug. “My bad.”
But the guards shared a look that made Nici very uncomfortable. As they took another step back, she reached for her sister’s hand and tugged. “We’re just gonna take her to the morgue now.”
The pockmarked guard nodded, his gaze sliding once again to the other guard with a hidden message. “Yeah, you go on now.”
As they turned away and started pushing the gurney, the hairs on the back of Nici’s neck rose. She didn’t need the sound of rifles being lifted to know what was about to happen. She grabbed Elena’s hand as they hit a cross-passage and pulled her sideways. Bullets pinged off the concrete walls and hit the metal frame of the gurney.
Nici gave the teen on the bed one last look and said a silent apology before she started running. Elena didn’t waste any time. She was right behind her as they flew down the empty passage toward a door at the end marked, Exit.
The door was locked. Nici looked through the long glass window and felt her pulse pick up. The concrete steps beyond the door were covered in water. More water rushed around a turn in the stairwell and hit the wall, spewing the brownish liquid over the landing in front of the door. She turned to Elena. “We can’t go out this way.”
They heard a shout and footsteps pounded down the passage at the end of the hallway. Elena fired toward the oncoming guards and then grabbed a door handle, turning it. “In here, hurry!”
They slid quickly inside the room, their feet splashing through a few inches of water.
Nici looked down and found the muddy water covering her shoes. “I don’t like this, Elena.”
Her sister frowned. “Yeah. You and me both. It looks like they decided to cut their losses and get the hell out of dodge.”
“In here!” someone shouted from the other side of the door.
Nici grabbed her sister’s hand and pulled her across the room, their legs kicking up muddy water as they ran. She opened another door at the back of the room and pulled Elena through. The room was pitch black and smelled like a butcher shop. Nici’s heart pounded against her ribs as she realized what that smell had to mean.
They turned the lock and leaned against the door, panting softly as they listened to the guards in the outer room.
“We need to look in there,” one of them said.
“There’s no way you’re getting me in there,” said another. It was a female voice.
An alarm sounded through th
e speakers in the rooms and hallways. “Evacuation priority ten. You have sixty seconds to get out of the bunker before we go into lockdown and emergency flooding completes. I repeat, Evacuation priority ten.”
“That’s it,” the female voice on the other side of the door said. “We need to leave. If those two are still in here they’re dead anyway. The halls are filling up fast.”
Nici’s hand found Elena’s in the darkness, squeezing it tight as panic welled.
“Boss told us to find ’em and get ’em out.”
“Suit yourself. I’m outa here.”
A beat later the door handle jiggled. Nici prayed the guard didn’t have some kind of master key or something. She held her breath for a moment and then started to relax. He must have left.
Something crashed into the door. They yelped, stumbling backward. Another crash was met by a splintering sound.
Elena’s breath bathed her ear. “He’s using an ax on the door. We need to find a way out of this room or we’re gonna have to go through him.”
Nici felt her way along the wall, finding a light switch. She flipped it on, figuring there was no use trying to pretend they weren’t in there.
The room exploded with stark, white light. “There has to be something in this room we can club him over the head with.” She looked to either side of the door and saw tall, glass fronted cabinets filled with meds and blood samples. A wooden chair bobbled in the rising water, the abandoned white coat that had been draped over the back floating from hem to pockets in the brown water. “Maybe we could use this chair.”
When Elena didn’t respond, Nici turned.
Her stomach twisted painfully and bile surged into her throat.
The room was filled with stainless steel tables and upon each table was a body. Many of them had been cut open, using the Y incision of an autopsy to expose their major organs. A couple of the bodies were missing the tops of their skulls and all of them looked as if they’d died of something horrible.
Elena stood with her hands clenched at her sides, her shoulders shaking as she took in the horror of the scene. Nici walked over and put her arm around her sister’s shoulders.
“They’re just kids,” Elena whispered.
“Like Betty,” Nici agreed. She realized with revulsion that Betty had been headed for the room they were standing in. But now she would die alone and in horrible pain in the waterlogged hallway.
A sob escaped her and Nici’s heart hardened against whoever was behind the terror in that room. If it was the last thing she did, she’d find and kill him.
The door trembled under another strike and Nici shook off the shock of their discovery. She squeezed Elena’s shoulders. “We need to move. If we don’t we’re going to drown or that guy behind the door is gonna get us.”
The door gave way, but the rising water kept it from opening very much. Nici threw herself at the door and shoved it closed again. Elena joined her. It immediately surged inward, nearly shoving them off their feet.
“If you’re waiting for your friend to save you, you’re out of luck. Somebody’s surely killed him by now. You two bitches are gonna die in there. You’d better come out and let me take you out of the bunker.”
Nici looked at Elena, her eyes wide with fear even as hope swelled at the thought of Franco coming for them.
The door shoved inward again. Nici grabbed the chair she’d been eyeing earlier and shoved it under the knob, shaking off the white coat.
Elena grabbed the coat. “I’ll get behind the door. You stand far enough away that he can’t hit you with the ax.”
“What are you gonna do with that?”
Elena smiled. “This is my butterfly net. I’m gonna catch a mean old rat with it.”
She moved back a couple of steps and Nici sloshed through the water, putting several feet between her and the entrance.
The door opened a crack and stopped, but it only took a few more shoves before it opened enough to let the guy through. He was still holding the ax and his rifle was slung over his shoulders. It was the pockmarked guard. “We’re running out of time, you two.”
He reached for Nici and she shoved a floating chair at him. He dropped the ax and grabbed it, easily pulling it from her hands. Elena suddenly emerged from behind the door and threw the wet coat over the man’s head, she grabbed the arms and wrapped them around his throat, putting all her weight on the makeshift garrote to keep the coat in place as he fought to pull it off. As the man stumbled into the room, struggling to shake off both Elena and the lab coat, Nici climbed onto an empty stainless steel table and, finally free of the restrictive water, swung her leg toward the lurching guard, kicking him neatly on the side of the head.
He fell backward, landing on Elena. All Nici could see of her sister were her flailing legs and desperately shoving hands. She jumped down and grabbed the man’s arm, rolling him off her sister.
Elena shot out of the water with a gasp, spewing liquid everywhere. Nici gave her a hand up. “Come on, we need to go find Franco.”
Elena dropped her hand. “Franco can take care of himself. We need to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving him.” Nici stopped just long enough to feel around through the rising water, which was up to their knees at that point, for the ax the guard had dropped. When her hand closed over the wooden handle, she dragged it out of the water and slipped through the door into the outer room. It was nearly impossible to move through the swirling brown mass of liquid. It was past her knees and rushing into the room at a speed that nearly took her off her feet. Grabbing hold of furniture when she could, she slowly made her way into the hallway. Elena sloshed out behind her.
Over the sound of rushing water, Nici could make out the sound of gunfire. “There’s Franco.” She started in that direction without even checking to see if Elena was coming. She couldn’t leave Franco to die in an underwater tomb. Not when he’d come in there to save her.
And especially not when she was starting to suspect she was falling in love.
They didn’t have far to go to find him. They hit the end of the passage and peered around the corner, finding him hunkered down behind an overturned desk with two guards at the other end shooting at him.
Nici’s heart warmed when she saw him. But she realized he was dead if he didn’t get out of there soon. If the guard’s bullets didn’t get him, the rising water surely would. She wondered why the guards didn’t leave him there and escape. Surely they were more interested in surviving than taking out one man who would probably die anyway.
Then she saw the red sign high on the wall above Franco’s head. He was in front of the nearest exit.
Something bumped up against Nici’s leg and she looked down, finding a rifle that someone had abandoned. She grabbed for it, dumping water out of the barrel as best she could.
Elena narrowed her gaze at the soggy weapon. “Hopefully that thing won’t blow up in our faces.”
“It should be okay,” Nici said, biting her lip. “We’re dead anyway if we don’t get out of here, right?”
Elena laughed. “I like the way you think, sis.”
And Nici loved the way that sounded. But later on the warm and fuzzies. She had a sexy bodynapper and potential boyfriend to save.
There was a lull in the shooting as Franco ejected the magazine in his gun. The frown on his handsome face told her everything she needed to know. He was out of ammo. She peeked around the corner and whistled. His head jerked up. He grinned when he saw her.
She pointed to the rifle, indicating that she’d give him cover. Franco gave her a thumbs up.
Nici sighted the two guards, cut the angle to minimize her own vulnerability and started firing. She hit one of the men, sending him screaming into the water. She risked a glance at Franco and didn’t see him.
Panicking, she forgot to shoot for a moment. Elena reached around her and fired the pistol she’d brought into the bunker.
“Where is he?” Tears filled Nici’s eyes, running in hot tracks
down her face. If he’d been hit trying to save her after she’d been careless enough to get caught...she wasn’t sure she’d be able to live with it.
The water erupted in front of them and Nici squealed as Franco rose from the water like a Nordic god, water streaming from his dark hair and fine form and heat sizzling in his sexy gaze. He headed straight for her, not even hesitating, and wrapped her in his arms as she gave a happy sob.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he told her in a husky voice. “Don’t ever do that again.”
She laughed as tears streamed down her cheeks. “It’s not like I wanted to get kidnapped...again.” She gave him a saucy grin and he laughed too.
Elena suddenly joined them. “Maybe you two could do the kissy face thing later. We’re about three minutes from drowning in this hell hole.”
Franco narrowed his gaze at her. “I’m glad to see you too, brat. But rest assured, you and I are going to have a discussion when this is all over.”
Elena rolled her eyes. “I can’t wait.”
“How are we going to get to that exit with the guard still out there?” Nici asked.
“He’s probably doing the breast stroke toward it now,” Franco said, frowning. “But you’re right, we’ll never make it there in time.”
Elena pointed toward a door down the hall. “I have a better idea.” She grinned at Nici. “But I’m pretty sure you’re gonna hate it.”
Nici sighed. “So what else is new?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“That’s your big plan?” Franco asked Elena. He stared at the underwater viewing window with the river beyond, looking dubious.
“It’s our best shot, boss,” she told him with a cocky grin, which wasn’t easy since the water was high enough in the room that they were seriously having trouble staying upright.
“When we break that glass the water’s gonna surge in here and knock us out,” Nici said, frowning. Her sister had been right. She didn’t like Elena’s plan for escaping. At all.
