by Mark Kelly
“Please…I am serious. The smell is not good. It reminds me of things I do not want to remember.”
“Let’s go then,” he said, gently squeezing her shoulder.
She followed him down the hallway and they made their way to the top floor. Access to the roof was through a locked steel door in the stairwell at the end of the corridor. Unlike the first door, this one was made of flimsy metal and Baker quickly opened it.
She rushed outside and yanked her mask down to suck in the cold, fresh air.
“The lab is over there,” Baker said after she caught her breath. He pointed towards the north-east corner of the building. She followed him as he walked in that direction. When they reached the edge, they peered over the top of the three-foot high wall that ran along all four sides of the roof.
The lab was less than a half-mile away. She didn’t know what to expect, but it looked nothing like the kind of place where deadly diseases were studied. It was made of glass and metal with bright atriums and ponds around the outside. A tall ominous-looking fence with barbed-wire and warning signs was the only thing that differentiated it from any other modern office building.
“Are you sure this is it?”
Baker panned the binoculars over the building and its surroundings. “This is it,” he said confidently. “I can hear a backup power generator and there are soldiers in the lobby and a couple more in a Humvee in the parking lot. I can’t see it from here, but I’m pretty sure there’s also a guarded entrance gate behind that small building between the lab and the road. The security is low-key, but there’s no reason for it unless there’s something important here.”
He handed her the binoculars so she could look. She saw the soldiers he had mentioned and movement in a truck down below, but the building itself appeared empty.
“Where are all the people?”
“The actual labs must be underground,” he said. “I think the part we can see is the administration section of the facility.”
“How are we going to get inside?”
Baker ducked back down. He rolled over and lay on his back with his head against the wall. “If it’s a BSL4 lab, it will have security and biocontainment systems to protect against whatever nasty things they have in there. Everything and everyone entering and exiting will be monitored and decontaminated. I don’t think we can get inside, and even if we could, I don’t think we would want to.”
Then what was the point in coming here? She wanted to scream the words at him, but held her tongue. “What about Raine? If we can not get inside, how will we kill him?”
“It’s about nine hundred yards from here to the lab,” Baker replied.” He patted the rifle lying on the roof beside him. “With this weapon and the wind, it will be tricky, but I think I can make the shot.”
Disappointed, she gave a resigned nod. She had thought she would be the one to kill Raine.
“What’s the matter?” he said, hearing her sigh.
“Nothing. As long as John Raine dies, I will be happy. What now?”
Baker raised his head and peered over the edge of the roof. “The convoy isn’t here yet, so I guess we wait.”
She groaned inside.
More waiting. All they ever did was wait.
Twenty minutes later, the rumble of a heavy-duty diesel engine and the sound of rubber rolling on asphalt drifted up to their position on the roof.
Lucia tensed with anticipation and glanced at Baker. He motioned at her to stay down, but she ignored him and peeked over the edge of the wall as three Humvees turned onto the tree-lined avenue running through the university’s campus.
The vehicles headed towards the building she and Baker were on top of and then turned left at the sign to the bio-lab, disappearing behind the building he suspected housed a guard post. They reappeared thirty seconds later in the lab’s parking lot.
Baker shifted onto his knees, resting his rifle on the wall while he stared through the scope. Lucia grabbed the binoculars from beside him and raised them.
There were four soldiers in the first vehicle and two in the rear one. Raine was in the middle Humvee with a soldier beside him and two more in the front. She watched him reach up and fidget with his hair before brushing a clump over his bald spot. He patted the hair down as he leaned forward to look at himself in the rearview mirror. Through the binoculars, he was so close she could almost touch him. Anger boiled inside her at the sight of him preening like a peacock.
The soldiers in the front and rear vehicles jumped out and moved to the far side of the middle Humvee.
“Shit.”
Lucia stared through the binoculars trying to figure out what Baker had seen. “What is it?”
“They’re setting up in a diamond formation before they leave the Humvees and head into the building,” he explained. “They’ll use three men on each flank and one on the point and rear. If Raine is in the middle, he’ll be shielded on all four sides. I won’t be able to take the shot without risking hitting one of the men.”
“Why are they protecting such a piece of shit?”
“He’s their mission, but they aren’t doing it just for him. They’re doing it to protect each other too. They must have run into problems on a previous trip outside the wire.”
The soldier sitting beside Raine slid across the seat and climbed out of the Humvee. Realizing that Raine would be next, Lucia spoke urgently.
“Shoot him now—through the window before he moves,” she urged Baker
“I can’t,” Baker groaned. “It’s pointless. The glass is bullet-resistant. At this distance and with the weapon I have, it would barely chip. Raine wouldn’t even end up with a scratch on him, and we’d never make it out of here alive.”
Lucia stared through the binoculars and watched Raine exit the Humvee. She caught a brief glimpse of the top of his bald head before he disappeared into the clump of soldiers. A minute later, he was in the building and then gone from sight. She clenched her teeth to stop herself from screaming in frustration. It wasn’t fair. Her children were dead; yet this pig continued to live.
47
A bus ride
Baker nudged her.
“Take a look—walking towards the parking lot.”
She took the binoculars he handed her and raised them to her eyes. After waiting all day and most of the evening, this was the first sign of activity since Raine had disappeared into the lab.
In the darkness, the high-powered optics draped everything in a black fog. Shapes lost their form and shadows became real. She slowly moved the binoculars in a sweeping motion until a pinprick of bouncing orange light caught her attention. The light flared for a second, highlighting the face of a soldier who was smoking a cigarette. He took another drag, and she followed him with her eyes as he walked across the parking lot to a school bus.
“What is he doing?” she asked Baker.
“Definitely not picking up kids for school.”
“Can you be serious for once?”
As she spoke, the soldier started the bus. Its bright headlights flicked on, momentarily blinding her. She shut her eyes and looked away. By the time she had regained her night vision, the bus was moving. She watched the soldier drive it to the front of the lab, blocking her view of the main entrance.
“I think they’re getting ready to move people,” Baker said, “most likely the people who work in the lab.”
“Are they going back to the base?” Lucia asked, worried she and Baker had wasted their time.
“I don’t think so,” he replied. “It wouldn’t make sense to move the workers back and forth every day. My guess is they’re staying around here, probably somewhere close to the lab.”
A flurry of movement inside the building caught her eye. She raised the binoculars and watched a small group of people step out of an elevator and walk across the darkened lobby. As they moved towards the building entrance, she scanned their faces looking for Raine.
“I don’t see him, do you?” Baker asked.
&
nbsp; “No. Maybe there are more of them coming.”
She panned the binoculars over the lobby, stopping when the elevator came back into view. Over the next ten minutes, the elevator door opened and closed multiple times. Slowly, the bus filled up with passengers, but there was no sign of John Raine.
Finally, just as she was beginning to wonder if he would ever reappear, the elevator door opened and two people stepped out alone. Lucia perked up. It was Raine and a woman in her sixties with her hair tied back in a bun. Judging from their animated conversation, the two of them were friends, or at the very least, acquaintances.
“I see him now,” she said to Baker. “He’s coming across the lobby. Who is he with?”
“Beats me, but if she’s here and he’s talking to her, she must have something to do with whatever is going on.”
“Do you have a shot?”
“No, not through the lobby window, but if he sits in a window seat on the left-hand side of the bus, I will.”
Lucia trained the binoculars on the bus, willing Raine and the woman to do as Baker required. In the grainy light, she could see the other passengers sitting in pairs, chatting and smiling. It made her sick. Whatever work these culeros did in their hole in the ground had something to do with the death of her children. The hatred she felt for Raine and the woman was contagious. “We should kill them all,” she said, spitting the words out.
“That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”
She didn’t think so, not if these pigs had anything to do with the pandemic. It wasn’t fair they should be alive and laughing while her children were dead.
“Get ready,” Baker warned. “When I take the shot, all hell will break loose.”
Lucia kept her eyes fixed on the bus, watching Raine and the woman board. Raine placed his hand on the back of the bus driver’s seat and stopped. He turned to his left to speak to an older man in a tweed jacket who was sitting in the first row.
“No…no…no, don’t do it,” Baker cried out in a low voice. “Tell him to fuck off.”
Scowling at Raine, the older man struggled to his feet. Lucia watched, dumbfounded, as the old man made a move towards the back of the bus while Raine and the woman took his seat on the right-hand side.
The wrong side.
The shot was gone. She wanted to scream with frustration as the bus pulled away with two Humvees in front and one behind.
“Come on, let’s go,” Baker shouted.
“Where?”
“Wherever they’re going. This isn’t over yet.”
48
Moths to a flame
Instead of running to the door that would lead them back into the building and down to their motorcycles, Baker ran to the far side of the roof and stood looking out over the edge.
Lucia caught up with him and glanced down at the road and watched as the bus, sandwiched between the Humvees, drove past the building she and Baker were on. The vehicles turned left at an intersection and disappeared.
“Why aren’t we following them?”
“I wish it were that easy,” Baker said, “but there’s no traffic to hide in and with our headlights they’d see us even if we kept our distance. From up here, I’ll be able to get an idea of where they’re going.”
“How? They are already gone.”
“No, they aren’t. There they are.” He raised his hand and pointed as the convoy reappeared further down the ring road that circled the campus. The vehicles turned right and continued in a south-easterly direction. Slowly, their red taillights faded to pinpricks before disappearing completely.
“Now, they are gone for good,” Lucia said, “and we are standing here doing nothing but staring into the dark. What is your plan?”
Baker ignored her and continued to gaze off into the distance. Baffled by his indifference, she repeated her question. “I asked you what the plan was?”
“That’s where they’re going,” he said, pointing it a direction vaguely to the left of where she had last seen the vehicles.
Lucia scoffed out loud. Half the small city was laid out in the direction he had pointed—and most of it was dark and uninhabited.
Baker turned to face her. In the darkness, she could see the shadow of a smile as he spoke. “There’s one building that’s different from all the others. Take a look. See if you can guess which one.”
She groaned out loud. “Do we have to play this game again? Just tell me what it is.”
“Think of it as a teaching moment,” Baker said as he moved closer and stood in front of her. He crouched down to her height and raised his arm again. “Use the binoculars and look in the direction I’m pointing. Do you see the lights?”
Lucia reluctantly did as he asked and peered through the binoculars. Blobs of light moved in and out of her field of vision as she scanned the horizon.
“I see many lights. So what?”
“Keep looking. Look for a pair that don’t flicker or change color. Do you see them?”
She begrudgingly continued to look, focusing until she saw two oval-shaped white lights near each other and brighter than the others.
“I see them, but what is your point?”
“They’re halogen lights. The light they give off is completely different from a wood fire or kerosene lamp, and given how bright they are, whoever they belong to isn’t concerned about being noticed. Any guesses who that might be?”
Lucia immediately understood what he was getting at. These days, the only people who weren’t concerned about being seen were those who were confident in their ability to protect themselves. “It’s the soldiers from the lab,” she said, impressed by his ability to see something where there was nothing to see.
He nodded. “They’ve probably set up a pair of security flood lights near the perimeter of wherever they’re staying. If we head towards those lights, we should find John Raine.”
She took a mental picture of the light’s location, noting the church spire to the left and the outline of trees in a park to the right. John Raine—that puta was like a cat with nine lives, but it was time to go and kill the cat. She spun around and headed back into the building with Baker close behind her.
They drove towards the church spire until Baker suddenly turned left, taking them in a different direction. Lucia followed him as he steered his bike into the alleyway between a dairy bar and bookstore. Both buildings had been looted and hundreds of torn, water-stained paperbacks lay on the pavement scattered amongst empty three-gallon tubs of ice cream.
“Why are we stopping?” she asked impatiently as Baker climbed off his motorcycle.
“The bikes are too noisy. We’ll walk from here.”
A short while later, they were crouched in a dry drainage ditch that ran alongside the road in front of an L-shaped five-story building. A large wooden sign on the building’s lawn read: WEST RESIDENCE HALL.
The building was surrounded on three sides by empty parking lots lit up by bright halogen lights. The only entrance Lucia could see was guarded by soldiers from the convoy who had taken the extra step of parking their Humvees protectively around the door.
“How are we going to get inside?” she asked.
“It used to be a student dormitory,” Baker whispered back. “It looks like it’s interconnected with the other dorms and they may not be as well guarded. Stay here and don’t move. I’m going to walk around and see if there’s another way in.”
When she didn’t answer, he reached over and touched her arm. “I’m serious. You’re not superwoman. This isn’t like it was with those idiots at the hospital. If these soldiers see you, they won’t hesitate to kill you. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
She knew he wouldn’t leave until he heard her speak the words aloud. “I promise not to do anything stupid. Now, go.” Satisfied, Baker slipped away into the darkness.
As soon as he was gone from sight, she ran her eyes over the building, searching for a way in. The bottom three floors were pitch-black and unused, but the t
op two floors showed signs of life. Behind the closed curtains, she could see the shadows of the occupants as they moved about.
In one room, through the gap between a pair of partially closed curtains, she glimpsed the old man who had given up his seat on the bus and cursed him under her breath.
Two rooms to the left, the stark white light from a battery-powered lantern suddenly clicked on. Lucia froze when John Raine’s ugly face appeared in the window. He looked out and then drew the curtains closed. Seconds later, the shadow of a figure with a hair bun appeared next to him.
Lucia lay motionless in the ditch, her eyes glued on the window as Raine and the woman from the lab talked to each other. They must be lovers, or perhaps she is his wife.
One by one, the lights on the fourth and fifth floor winked out. Soon, Raine’s room was the only one lit. Lucia felt a knot form in her stomach. If Baker didn’t return soon, they would miss their opportunity to kill Raine.
She reached down and retrieved her pistol from its holster, only to put it away seconds later. Her aim was good, but not good enough to shoot a man in the head using a pistol from a hundred yards.
When Raine’s room went dark a minute later, she cursed out loud. The opportunity to kill him was lost—again. Anger bubbled up inside her. She was angry at Raine for going to sleep, and at Baker for taking so long to return. Now, they would have to wait until morning.
No…they wouldn’t.
She had told Baker she wouldn’t do anything stupid. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t do something smart, she thought, smiling to herself.
Crawling along the drainage ditch, she studied the building looking for a way in. The main entrance and the darkened windows on the ground floor were the only options she saw, but either one would require crossing the brightly lit parking lot, and to do that she would have to distract the guards somehow.
She considered moving out into the open and letting the soldiers capture her, like she had done at the hospital in Canada, but if Baker was correct, they’d shoot her as soon as they saw her. She needed another way in.
