Apex

by Ryan W. Aslesen

  Shackle inserted the probe into the wound, started picking around in the flesh.

  Max never knew such a level of pain existed. He literally howled all of the air from his lungs when Shackle began scratching one of his vertebrae. Several seconds passed in utter agony, white lights strobing and fireworks exploding behind his eyes. His ears rang; his teeth ached; his entire body felt as if it had been run through a rock crusher.

  Again, the pick scratched at his spine...

  An intense bolt of pain shot from his neck and radiated through every nerve to all parts of his body. With one forceful shudder, he mercifully lost consciousness.

  ***

  Tormented visions of battles past and friends long dead crackled through every synapse in Max’s cortex. Bullets flew, things exploded, mutated aliens and zombies tried to eviscerate him. He tortured men past the limits of their fortitude, took pleasure as he watched them break, even as he realized he would one day sit in the chair.

  Am I there?

  The thought echoed in his brain as the visions of carnage faded into a dull brown that grew lighter with each passing second. His eyes finally opened, staring at the single bulb burning on the ceiling.

  “Wakey, wakey,” said a gutturally accented voice from somewhere.

  Max turned his head and saw the inquisitor—What the fuck’s his name?—standing by the instrument cart, smoking another cigar.

  “Thought I was gonna have to pour water on you. Might not be a bad idea, actually.”

  Max, fresh out of witty retorts, said nothing.

  “And now you understand the art of inquisition. I bet you been doin’ it wrong all these years.”

  Max remained silent. The pain in his neck had him feeling nauseous.

  “Know what the problem with blokes like you is, Mr. Ahlgren? You make everyone around you suffer for your sins.”

  Max couldn’t help but laugh over the objections of his pain-wracked body. “First intelligent thing you’ve said all day.”

  “Well, it’s true. I once worked over a hardass like you, a Royal Marine who thought he could stand up to anything. He had a bottomless supply of fortitude... until I dropped his son’s drawers and made him a eunuch.”

  “Good for you. But I don’t have a son. Some other maniac already killed him.”

  “You got yourself a chippy though, sweet little thing in the cell just down the hall.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t be daft, man; you came here to rescue the reporter.”

  “Why the fuck does everyone think that? I don’t know any reporters, I hate the bastards. Everybody does.”

  “As you say. That being the case, I suppose you wouldn’t mind if I bent her over right here in front of you?”

  “Wouldn’t bother me at all. I like a good sex show as much as the next guy.”

  “Heh heh, nice try, mate. But nobody’s buyin’ that. ’Scuse me a moment while I go fetch me some arse.” Shackle unlocked the cell with his magnetic card and departed, grinning and whistling.

  As Max had hoped, Wilde’s soldiers hadn’t found the handcuff key secreted in a small custom pocket on the interior waist band of his BDU pants. Since his thrashing had stretched the leather belts a bit, he found enough leeway to maneuver the fingers on one of his cuffed hands into his waist band, despite the very close proximity.

  His shoulder joints burned like two blazing stars. His broken finger throbbed. Icepicks of agony continued to shoot down his spine.

  Pain be damned, get the fucking thing already!

  He grunted, growled, muttered curses, and twice yelled out in anguish as he maneuvered the index and middle fingers of his right hand into the small pocket, popping the couple of threads that secured the opening. His probing fingers located the tiny metal object, pinched together on it, and slowly began to extract it.

  He managed a good grip; the only part of him that didn’t ache was his right hand. The key still slipped in his fingers as he freed it from his pocket.

  Shit!

  He didn’t drop the little bugger, but his fingers now pinched only a sliver of metal. With slow and deliberate movements, he improved his grip, brought his left hand into the mix, the broken finger an immobile stick that kept getting in the way.

  The task of opening the cuffs appeared impossible. Hellik had cinched them down tight, and all Max’s thrashing had bruised his wrists.

  Figure it out or the Cockney kills you.

  He gritted his teeth, gripped the key tightly between two fingers, and probed upward, seeking the tiny keyhole. Jesus, put some hair around it. Soon he found the hole, yet it took an interminable time to insert the key.

  There!

  Using his fingertips, he attempted to turn the key. On the third try he finally succeeded in freeing his right hand. The rest wasn’t exactly gravy, especially with his shoulders in such pain, but he worked his right arm free of the restraining belt around his torso, then threw off the belt altogether. He uncuffed his left wrist before removing the second belt from his ankles.

  Voices and a bit of laughter floated in from the hallway.

  Freedom and not a second too soon.

  Shackle’s Cockney accent sounded even stranger when he spoke French, though his machinegun laugh remained every bit as annoying. Max couldn’t possibly escape his pain, but adrenaline flowed through him as he awaited Shackle’s return, dulling his aches somewhat.

  I’m gonna enjoy this.

  Not bothering to consult the viewing window, Shackle stuck his card in the lock and pushed open the door. “Guess I’ll have to settle for—”

  Shooting out his right hand, Max grabbed Shackle by his scrawny neck, squeezed, then tossed him across the room to crash hard into the cinderblock wall. Max kicked the door closed and sprang at him.

  Blood gushed from a laceration on Shackle’s head. Though dazed, he had a stiletto in hand. He took a couple of exploratory slashes at Max’s gut but moved awkwardly.

  Max evaded a third knife thrust; then he swung the handcuffs with blinding speed at Shackle’s head, shattering the orbital bone around his good eye.

  “Fuck!” Shackled shouted as he fell, his voice pitched a good two octaves higher.

  Max advanced, brought his bare foot down on Shackle’s right wrist. The stiletto dropped to the floor, and Max kicked it into a corner.

  “No... please!”

  Max dropped a knee onto Shackle, all of his body weight crashing down on the torturer’s sternum. The dull bass crack, much like the sound of thick ice breaking apart in a spring thaw, put a crazed smile on Max’s face.

  “Fucking amateur! This is how you torture someone!” He dug his fingers into Shackle’s broken eye-socket—grasped, tore, scooped out the eyeball.

  Blinded Shackle began to scream.

  Max seized his neck with two constricting hands, effectively shutting him up. He slammed Shackle’s head into the concrete over and over until the torturer went limp and shit himself, dying far too soon for Max’s liking.

  I wish I could kill you ten times.

  But even if that were possible, there simply wasn’t time.

  Heat.

  Max ripped the lanyard with Shackle’s red magnetic key card from his belt, then retrieved the stiletto from the corner. Spying no one through the tiny window, Max opened the cell door a crack and scanned the hallway, found it deserted.

  As Max stepped into the hall, a feminine scream presaged a string of curses that would have humbled a sailor. Heat had to be behind one of these doors. Quick and silent, Max skulked toward the sound, glancing through every window until he located her five doors down.

  She writhed on the concrete floor at the mercy of two guards. One man lay atop her, pants at his ankles as he tried to mount her; the second stood with his back to the door as he snapped pictures of hi
s buddy in action. Both men were armed with combat knives, yet they carried no guns.

  Max unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  The filming guard didn’t turn, kept his eye to the viewfinder as he said with a heavy French accent, “Hurry, Monsieur Shackle, or you will miss the show.”

  Max grinned, more than happy to let them mistake him for Shackle—right up until he rammed the stiletto through the cameraman’s neck. The guard fell, coughing up blood and the last of his lifeforce.

  His buddy rolled off of Heat to find himself in a very compromising position. He tried inching away on his butt like a caterpillar with a boner, ankles bound by his own trousers. Then, finding himself cornered, he decided to beg for his life in French.

  “No parlay voo.” Max took a step to gain momentum, then drove his bare foot into the guard’s scrotum.

  Spurts of blood pulsed from his hard-on to splatter the cell walls, a Modern Art masterpiece. Any nearby guard who might have heard his feminine scream would assume it was Heat.

  Rolling to her knees, Heat turned and began to further pound the guard’s balls into goop.

  “Let me handle this.” Max gently placed a hand on Heat’s shoulder.

  Her assault slowed at his touch, and after two weaker blows she collapsed into hyperventilating sobs.

  Intense groin pain had the guard rolled into a ball on the ground.

  Let this one suffer. Using the stiletto, Max punched two holes in the man’s back, one for each kidney. That’ll take a while.

  “Oh fuck.” Heat grinned as she wiped her face. I—”

  “Did they get to you?” Max asked.

  “No... not quite.”

  “Good.” Max picked up her jeans from the floor and tossed them to her.

  “Fuck, my camera!” The lens shattered when the guard dropped it.

  “We’ll buy you another. Now get dressed.”

  “I brought another; we just have to get it.”

  “Later. For now, why the fuck did you come here?”

  “Look, let’s not get into that.” Heat donned her pants. “We don’t have time for chit chat. Josh isn’t here; he’s up at the chateau.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I snooped around before they caught me.” Before Max could speak, she raised a hand. “No time for questions. I saw shit in here you wouldn’t believe.” As her adrenaline subsided, she looked closely at him for the first time. “Jesus, you’re fucked up.”

  “Don’t remind me, makes it hurt more. I need to find some gear, a pistol at the very least.”

  “I know where they stowed my stuff, maybe yours is there too.” Now fully dressed, she moved to the cell door. “Well, you gonna stand there bleeding all day or get us the fuck outta here?”

  What did you expect, a My hero! and gracious thanks? Answer: nothing of the sort. Max didn’t need it anyway. He took the cue from Heat and got them the fuck outta there.

  22

  “How do you know it’s this one?” Max asked. He and Heat stood before a locked door labeled in French.

  “It says storage? Besides I saw the guard who took my shit come out of here while I was running loose.”

  “Worth a shot.”

  He inserted a black key card taken from one of the dead guards. As the lock clicked, he tensed, the combat knife in his right hand poised for action. The door swung open, revealing only darkness. Heat flicked a switch, illuminating a space slightly over ten feet to a side, all block and concrete. Mundane items dominated, particularly cleaning supplies and other non-perishable items. At a glance, Max might have dismissed it as a broom closet and moved on, but his pack, plate carrier, boots, and the remainder of his combat uniform lay heaped in a corner with his weapons.

  A loaded civilian hiking pack sat next to his gear.

  They entered, closing the door behind them.

  Heat checked her backpack, found she still had two spare cameras and all of her food left. “How about you?”

  “They took my knives and my last grenade. Otherwise it’s all here.” Not for the first time, Max applauded himself for not using 9mm weapons. Even so, I’m damn near out of ammo.

  “They didn’t even delete my photos. Bonus!”

  “Because they weren’t worried about you getting off this island. They also didn’t have time.” Max figured that, with the place on high alert, the task of sorting confiscated gear hadn’t been a priority.

  He opened his first-aid kit. “Help me out; bandage my neck while I do my gut.”

  “Jesus, what the fuck happened here?” Heat asked.

  “First it was shrapnel; then I got tickled.”

  Max devoured six Motrin, though they’d do practically nothing to ease his pain. As he geared up—a difficult and painful process—he briefed Heat on what they’d encountered.

  She took the loss of Leseur personally. “I got him killed. It was my idea to bring him as a guide.”

  “Nobody forced him to come. He was just unfortunate.” And fucked up on something, but I’ll never know what.

  After a short time, Heat said, “I can’t leave without getting some pictures of the dinosaurs.”

  “You’ll probably get your chance. The big ones aren’t shy, but they might not want their picture taken.”

  “That’s why I keep you around.”

  Now fully geared for combat, Max found himself feeling a bit stronger, ready to take on the rest of Wilde’s forces. Bring it on, Hellik.

  “So, what’s your plan?” Heat asked.

  “We wait for Swift to attack the bunker. While they’re duking it out, we assault through and make our escape. Then it’s on to the chateau to grab Josh, but first we need to find the elevator.”

  “I need to check something out before we go.”

  “What?” He didn’t like the sound of it. She needed to concentrate on escaping the island with what little information she had instead of running around trying to gather more.

  “I heard some strange noises that I thought might have been dinosaurs and smelled shit that removed all doubt.”

  “So what?”

  “So it’s my best chance to get pics of one. They’re probably in cages.”

  “No way. We can’t be certain there aren’t troops still down here.”

  “Well, what else are we supposed to do until Swift attacks?”

  “Infiltrate the first level and get in position.”

  “Okay... Guess I’ll catch up to you later.” She moved for the door.

  “You won’t get far without a key card.”

  “Then I suppose you should come with me.”

  Max stared her down, then shook his head. “Let’s get this over with. And this is the last time I humor you.”

  They opened the door on an empty hallway. Heat broke left with Max alongside, the duo slipping rapidly through the shadowy hallways.

  A claxon sounded, two resonant electronic beeps annoyingly repeated every couple of seconds.

  They froze.

  Heat scowled toward the source of the sound. “Shit, they must have seen us.”

  Max leaned close to be heard over the racket. “I don’t think so. We’d be swarmed with troops. They’ve probably spotted Swift, so let’s get this done.”

  They moved on. At the sounds of running footsteps, they lingered in the shadows. Two guards sprinted through an intersection ahead, no doubt hell-bent on reaching the elevator. They didn’t glance in Max’s direction.

  He and Heat continued straight through that intersection and made a left at the next. She slowed down as they walked the hallway, which continued on for a good distance before appearing to terminate at a dead end.

  They stopped before a pair of heavy steel doors. “Specimen storage,” Heat translated from the plaque by the doors. “Hear that?”

  Max put an ear t
o the door, heard a bellow like a groaning alligator followed by a honk from a smaller dinosaur. “Yeah, those are dinosaurs back there.”

  “Get us in already!”

  Max tried the black key card to no avail; the red proved equally useless. “Go figure. Wilde is probably the only one with access.”

  “Shit! I have to have—”

  Max pointed down the hallway at a section of the right wall that appeared to glow. “Well looky there.” He led the way.

  After about a hundred feet they came to another door, unlabeled, next to an observation window long enough to accommodate several spectators.

  Camera in hand she gazed through the window. “Good God.”

  “God’s got nothing to do with it.”

  A dinosaur roughly ten feet tall, one of the maneaters, lay unconscious on its side in a cage. Many tubes and wires emanated from its body, most leading to what appeared to be life-support equipment.

  Except one tube ran from the dinosaur to an IV connected to a second specimen—a local man likewise hooked to life-support machines, who lay naked atop an operating table as he received the blood transfusion.

  “Shit, this is unbelievable.” Heat fiddled with her camera. “Try the door.”

  Alas, neither of the cards worked.

  “Dammit!” She messed with the camera some more. “Can’t use the flash through the window; I’ll have to try a time exposure.”

  “Then get to it, we don’t have time to spare.”

  Heat took a couple of minutes getting the pictures, while Max kept his rifle aimed down the hallway behind them. “What is Wilde trying to do?” she asked. “What purpose could this research serve?”

  “I forgot to mention—” on purpose “—that Wilde has successfully engineered human/reptilian crossbreeds. I suppose this is how it’s done.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve fought a couple, and they’re both still alive.”