"I get it. I don't doubt you either," Xander assured him and the others nodded in agreement.
"What about the deaths?" Shay asked.
"Both car accidents."
"Convenient," Xander nodded.
"So, I guess we can’t doubt some kind of government involvement anymore then," Zak sighed.
"Nope." Xander leaned back in his chair. "Do you have any ideas?" he asked Hacker. "About the government involvement?"
"Like which agency it is?"
"Yeah."
"Hell if I know. Some combination of letters, I suppose. CIA, NSA, maybe even the MIB."
"MIB?" ET asked.
"The Men in Black," Xander gave him a humorless smile. "As in Will Smith, alien movie."
Everyone got quiet for a moment realizing the elephant in the room was just acknowledged. "So," Hacker said eventually. "You think its aliens too?"
"We, kind of know its aliens," Shay cringed.
"Know?" Hacker looked at each of them in turn.
Xander sighed. "I guess it's our turn to tell what we know."
When Xander, Shay, Zak, and ET had finished filling Hacker in on their story they all needed more beers. Hacker nearly finished his in one gulp. "I can't believe we are actually talking about aliens," Hacker shook his head. He looked even more exhausted than before.
"So what have you been doing?" Shay asked him. "You still haven't explained how you ended up here."
"When the blogs started disappearing I started trying to track down information different ways. I wandered the city. I checked police blotters. I saw an arrest being made after one of the attacks." He paused when he saw the others all look at each other. "What?"
"We heard about the arrest too," Xander raised his brows.
"And?"
"What arrest?" he asked sarcastically.
"I'm guess you didn't call the police to ask about the supposed arrest though, right?"
"We did," Shay answered. "It didn’t turn out well."
Hacker's lips twitched angrily. "I made some calls too. Next thing I know, my condo catches on fire."
"Holy shit!" Xander was floored. Not by the fact that some agency would try to burn down a security threat’s house, but by the fact that it could have been them.
"Well, you were distraught," Shay tried to make Hacker feel a little better.
"It was still stupid."
"Were you home at the time?" Zak asked.
"I was. My dog barking woke me up." I wouldn't have gotten out if there weren't a bunch of boards the property manager had left leaning against the back of my building. I was able to climb down using them."
"Do they think you are dead?" Xander asked.
Hacker shrugged. "I don't know. Depends on if they have searched the rubble yet."
"What happened to your dog?" Shay's mouth melted into a frown.
"He didn't make it out. He wouldn't come out from underneath the bed. I had to get out, or I would have died too," he finished almost defensively. “The smoke was too thick and the bed too heavy…”
"When was that?" Zak asked him.
"Five days ago. I've been wandering the streets since then. I didn’t know who to go to. Who to trust. Or how much danger people will be in if I were to reach out to them."
Xander wrinkled his nose. "But you didn't care about endangering us?"
Hacker gave him a sardonic look. "You looked like you were putting yourself and the others in plenty of danger yourself."
He didn't argue with that. "How did you end up at the country club?"
Hacker rubbed a hand across his face. "I got lucky—if you want to call it that—two nights ago. I was walking Millennium Park and witnessed an attack. A cop happened to be patrolling at the same time. He got there before I could. The woman who was attacked seemed OK, just really shaken up and scared. The cop cuffed the attacker—the berserker—and put him in the back of his car. I was hiding—watching. I wanted to see what would happen. After the woman left a white van showed up. They
Tased the berserker, put him in the van, and then the cop gave the guy driving the van some papers and just left."
"Was the guy driving the van the same from earlier?" Xander interrupted.
"No, but it was the same kind of van."
"How did you follow it?"
"I didn't. I remembered the license plate. Then I looked it up. You have to pay for the service, but you can find out a lot of info. I just had to sell my watch, buy a visa gift card, then create a fake email account."
Xander, Shay, and Zak all looked at ET. They had taken the risk of following the van on ET’s instructions. "What?!" he raised his hands in defense. "We were in a hurry and had to make a split second decision."
"Are the vans registered to the country club?" Xander asked.
"No. Not directly. But they are registered to John Smith and his address is the country club. That's the only information I can find out about this 'John Smith.' That he has a bunch of vans and apparently lives at the country club."
Chapter Forty
Time slowed to microseconds as Sydney waited for the next shot to take off her or Darren’s head. But the shot never came. A loud grunt and the sound of bodies colliding outside the door made her flinch. But, when she realized it wasn’t another attack on them she dared to hope they might actually make it out alive. She put her ear against the door and heard struggling.
She waved Darren back a little and cracked the door. Jake, the jogger, and the man who had been arguing with Jason were struggling on the floor. “Get him!” she threw open the door and pointed the way for Darren. The big berserker darted through the door and joined the pile of bodies. Sydney used the opportunity to limp to the cot and retrieve her knife and phone. When she turned, Darren was pounding the man’s head against the floor. “Here,” she held out the knife to him. Darren’s face was a neutral mask, a computer following commands. She shuddered as he drove the blade into the man’s chest.
“Let’s go,” she tucked the phone into her pocket and took the knife from Darren sliding it into the holder she hooked to the waistband of her jeans.
She was steady on her feet again so when Darren made to pick her up she waved him off. But she did hold onto his arm as she hurried as fast as she could go down the hall towards the front door with Jake following them silently. Outside the office building, the wailing of distant sirens raised the hairs on the back of her arms. Now she worried about being arrested too. If that happened, she would have a lot of explaining to do. The best case scenario would lead to her being thrown in jail. The worst? In a lab somewhere.
She came to a stop outside the glass doors, looking to her left and right. “Which way?” she didn’t expect Darren to answer, and he didn’t. When the doors behind them exploded into shards of glass she bolted into action. “This way!” she pulled Darren’s arm and hurried to the right trusting that Jake would stay with them. Her knee throbbed but held her weight.
They just needed a place to hide until the firemen showed up. Boss’ men were terrible and criminals. But they weren’t berserkers. Or other-worldly creatures. If she was out of sight, and if they were confronted by firemen and police, they would mostly run to fight again another day. In the next parking lot Sydney darted between the two office buildings. “We need a place to hide,” she panted.
“There?”
Darren was pointing towards a dumpster enclosure across the courtyard. His voice hoarse and low, barely more than a grunt. “Yes!” she gasped. “Hurry!”
By the time they slipped behind the metal dumpsters, Sydney could hear a car screeching out of the parking lot of Boss’ building. She slid to the ground, trying to catch her breath. “Sit,” she told Darren and Jake. They did as she asked. The sirens drew closer and warbled in time with her heartbeat. She pulled the phone from her pocket and unlocked the screen. The tears that had been held back by adrenaline started to leak from her eyes. Both from the pain and from the surprise of having survived.
The phone rang
long enough that she began to worry something was wrong. Finally, Shay’s voice sent a flood of relief over her.
“Sydney!”
“Come get us,” was all she could croak.
“OK. What happened?”
“Too much to explain. Just come.”
“A lot has happened on our end too. Where are you?”
“By a dumpster next to the building where we were being held. We are on the north side of the building”
“We?”
Sydney could hear Xander and Zak in the background asking questions. But she could also hear Shay moving as they, presumably, headed for their truck.
“Yeah. I’m with two berserkers.”
“Uh, OK. What about Gary?”
“He’s dead.”
“OK.”
“Watch out for the firemen and police when you get here.”
“Shit! OK.”
“Just call when you are close. It will be better if we find a way to get to you.”
***
Thirty minutes later, Darren, Jake, and Sydney were sitting at a bus stop waiting for Shay and the others. She had taken Jake’s jacket to help cover how bloody she was. Despite the chill in the air, he didn’t look too out of place. He would certainly draw less attention than Sydney would considering the state she was in. She leaned against the glass enclosure trying to look like a tired commuter. It was almost three in the morning. People taking the bus this time of night would be tired, right? She just hoped they were close enough to the airport to not seem all that unusual to be catching a bus this late.
As time went on the police began to outnumber the fireman. And, as her adrenaline wore off, Sydney was left shaky and on the verge of throwing up. She had tried to examine her wound but even trying to look at it caused a wave of dizziness to spin her head. She took deep breaths and tried to ignore the blood oozing down her chest and stomach. She knew she would need some kind of medical attention soon or she would go into shock from the loss of blood. Then I’ll bleed to death. Darren and Jake were silent on either side of her.
“Jake?” The man turned to her but didn’t speak. “What happened on the fifth floor?
“They died.” His voice was as rough as Darren’s.
“Who?”
“All of them?”
“The berserkers?” His brow wrinkled at her as he tried to figure out what she meant. “The others like you.”
“Yes.”
She nodded and finally felt the weight of their loss. Infected by aliens or not, it was a loss of life. It didn’t matter if it happened before Moreno kidnapped them or if it was when Boss’ men killed them. It was a prolonged death that was just now official. “How did you survive?”
He hesitated. “I fell.”
Sydney wasn’t sure if his hesitation was guilt or embarrassment or just a difficulty talking, but it surprised her nevertheless. “It’s OK,” she told him. Jake didn’t respond. “Are either of you hurt?” she finally thought to ask. Both men shook their heads. “Well, that’s good.”
They were on a main road a half mile from the office building and the wave of police and fire trucks had abated. Now, more were leaving than arriving. The newest vehicles to arrive were several white vans. Coroner? she wondered. But since there wasn’t anything written on the sides she couldn’t know for sure.
When a dark SUV approached from the east and began to slow, her heart rate picked up. When she saw Xander’s face behind the wheel, she grinned despite the agony her body was currently racked with. But, the grin faded when she noticed the unfamiliar face in the passenger side. Xander sagged in relief when he saw her. The stranger rolled down the window.
“Hi Sydney,” he said.
Xander leaned over him. “Get in,” his voice cracked, but he didn’t look scared. Just glad to see her alive.
“Who’s this?” she nodded at the new guy. He looked friendly, but tired. He had dark circles under his eyes and his hair was greasy.
“Hacker,” Xander smiled again to reassure her. “He’s here to help.”
Chapter Forty-One
Sydney narrowed her eyes at the new guy, but she opened the back door anyway. When the interior light came on she finally noticed Shay sitting behind Xander.
"Oh, man!" her friend threw her arms around her in relief. "I'm so glad to see you!"
Sydney yelped and Shay let go of her quickly. "Me too!" she fought back a sob. She slid next to Shay to give Darren room but when she turned around she didn't see him. "Hey!" She called. "Hurry up! Get in. Jake, I think you'll have to get in the cargo space." Shay eyed the men warily and she could see Xander watching in the rearview. "They're OK. They both saved my ass tonight." She could tell that they were just taking her word for it since neither of them relaxed.
Xander hit the gas before the doors were even fully closed. "Are you OK?" he asked.
"Well," she hesitated. "No." She felt Xander take his foot off the gas before realizing he couldn't stop.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"I was shot."
This time he did slam on the breaks. Luckily, there were no cars behind them. "What? Where?"
"Go!" She waved him on. "In the shoulder. Don't stop. We'll take care of it when we are clear."
Hacker leaned around his seat to look at her. "Can I see?"
She studied him for a moment. "It hurts too bad right now. Can I wait to get out of the truck?"
"Of course," he smiled at her.
She watched him as he turned back to face front. He seemed harmless, but who the hell was he? Shay must have read her thoughts.
"We'll explain everything once we get back to the house and take care of your shoulder."
"We need to take her to the hospital," Xander mumbled without much conviction. He didn’t need to be reminded that the hospital was out of the question.
"Too much paperwork," Sydney mumbled.
"I can help," Hacker told her. She must have looked pretty doubtful because he smiled again. "I was in the military when I was younger. I'm trained in 'battlefield first aid.'"
“You think you can help?” Xander asked.
"It can't be too bad," Hacker shrugged. "If it had hit any arteries she would have bled out already. Can you move any of your arm at all?"
"A little," she told him without demonstration. "It just hurts like a motherfucker if I do." As if to punctuate her statement, the pain in her shoulder flared white and she could feel the bile in the back of her throat.
"It sounds like no bones were broken either then."
Xander visibly relaxed at Hacker's assessment. Sydney continued to evaluate the guy. She wasn't prone to trusting strangers, but Shay and Xander seemed comfortable with him so she had to trust their judgment. "Jake, Darren, I think I'm going to pass out now. Listen to Xander and Shay..." As everything went dark she could hear Shay gasp.
***
When Sydney felt herself being lifted from the truck she woke up with a yowl of pain. "Sorry," Xander muttered in her ear. If she hadn't been fighting so hard to not scream at the agony in her shoulder, his breath on her ear would have warmed her whole body. She felt him carrying her inside and she opened her eyes to check on the two berserkers. They were following silently with Shay and Hacker bringing up the rear. Hacker was watching the men with wary interest.
"Where are you going to put them?" She croaked.
"Basement?"
"Is it comfortable?"
Xander looked at her in surprise. "Comfortable enough..."
She was too tired and weak to argue. She was also annoyed at being carried around. But given what she had been through in the past two hours, she decided to cut herself some slack.
"What the hell happened?" she heard Zak exclaim when they were in the house. "Who the hell are they?"
"She was shot. They helped her. Can you set them up in the basement? Blankets and stuff?"
Zak must have realized what the two newcomers were because he didn't say anything else. Sydney just heard him hurry away,
his shoes squeaking on the linoleum.
"Put her on the table," Hacker ordered. "Xander, do you have a first aid kit here?"
"Probably," he answered as he kicked a chair out of the way and eased her onto the hard dining room table.
"ET?" Hacker called.
"Yes?" ET’s voice came from farther away. No doubt trying to stay away from the berserkers.
"Find the first aid kit. I also need some thread and a needle if you have it."
"I have that," Shay answered. "Come on, I'll help you find the other stuff."
Xander, Hacker, and Sydney were left alone in the dining room. Hacker leaned over her with a weary, yet, reassuring smile. "I'm going to cut off your shirt, OK?"
"Whatever," she muttered. At the moment, she couldn't care if he stripped her naked.
"Do you have any liquor?" Hacker asked Xander.
He snorted. "Of course."
Hacker smiled again. "I think she's going to need it. I might too," he grimaced.
Hacker helped her sit up while Xander retrieved a bottle of Jack. "I have to warn you," she said. "This might make me throw up."
"No worries if it does, I've seen worse."
“Hacker…Why is your name familiar?”
“I was a writer.”
“Oh…oh!” she exclaimed as she remembered reader some of his articles connecting the attacks. “I read some of your stuff,” her voice sounded hollow and dreamy, even to her.
“Ah, I’m relieved someone got to read it at least.”
Hacker's voice was starting to annoy her. The hard table on her butt was annoying her. Everyone in the house shuffling and banging around was annoying her. She just wanted to sleep. Hacker put the bottle in her good hand and it felt like it weighed a million pounds. Xander reached out to tip the bottom up. Two swallows and she dropped the bottle with a gasp. "Yuck," she gagged.
Xander leaned her back until she was laying again and Hacker held up a pair of kitchen scissors. "Here we go."
Show No Fear (The Dyian Series Book 2) Page 24
