“Very clever Mr. Masterson.” The hoarse voice of Danielle surrounded John. “Do you actually believe that it would be this easy? My men got just as far as you have using roughly the same methods. Unfortunately, not all Azrael are sheep. Some are wolves while others are…”
A massive Azrael vaulted through the window of the Pharmacy and stood tall searching the store for any humans. It sniffed the air and looked directly at John’s direction.
“…evolved.” She finished. It tilted its head and studied the nearest loudspeaker with interest. Five men exited the Pharmacy behind it wearing SWAT armor and appeared freshly turned. “Good luck John. Oh, by the way, your lovely Savanna is watching.”
“Don’t worry about me John. Save yoursel…”
“Shut up bitch.” A slapping sound followed. “It’s too late for him. Now, watch as your Dear John finally joins the herd of Assbreathers.”
Moments later, classical music filled the atmosphere, concealing all sounds making John’s current tactic ineffective. The large Azrael returned its eyes towards John. He was sweating too much. He must have sweat through the new masking agent. He reapplied the new unscented formula all over once again and wished that he could tell if it was enough. He watched as the Azrael’s nose twitched and it grunted. The five behind it dispersed in separate directions. The Alpha climbed back into the window of the Pharmacy. Two of them were headed straight for John. A few seconds later the other three disappeared into the Home section. Fuck, he thought. All wore helmets and body armor making accuracy with his shots more important than ever before.
John retreated towards the Lawn and Garden section. To his horror, the front of the section was wide open and a mass of Azrael was trickling inside. They were blindly following the sound of the music through the dense fog that hid the inherently dangerous mob within. Most were anorexic naked bodies shambling forwards with pale skin covered in a damp coat of mud. John returned to the main section of the store and crouched inside one of the Health and Beauty aisles. He noticed about twenty naked bodies moving towards his location and the two SWAT Azrael headed towards them. One of them grunted towards the naked ones attempting to communicate. To John’s surprise, the mob of nude Azrael attacked the SWAT Azrael. The two fought back knocking them off with ease. However, forty more appeared through the entryway and overwhelmed them, tearing the flesh from their exposed bodies and eating it. John gasped. The other three exited the Home section, howled, and attacked the growing herd of starved naked Azrael. Within minutes, their bodies were pulled from their armor and consumed.
The large Alpha exited the Pharmacy after hearing the howls. It released a mighty roar and banged on its chest when it noticed the herd eating its followers. Through the fog behind the herd another Alpha, roughly the same size as the Pharmacy Alpha, entered the store. It pushed the uncoordinated herd aside and stepped out in front of them to face the opposing Alpha. Something was different about its movements and mannerisms that John couldn’t quite pinpoint.
Although, the boxer within John desired to see the outcome of the fight, he needed to seize the opportunity to enter the Pharmacy while it was unguarded. He quietly climbed through the window, located a pink tote bag, and stuffed it with a wide variety of drugs. He grabbed a few plastic bags from the dispenser near the register and emptied as much of the pharmacy shelves as he could carry within reason. He still needed to be able to draw his pistol at any given moment. He figured that he would just drop the shit, shoot and run. He had plenty in the tote bag to help all of what’s left of Chicago. So he thought.
John peeked out through the window and heard nothing but music. He had no clue where any of the Azrael were or which Alpha survived the battle. John took in a few controlled breaths and thought of Savanna. She needed him. She needed him to survive. He can’t be stupid. He needed to plan instead of just jumping out and sprinting towards the back like he previously thought of doing.
A crazy thought entered John’s mind. Although it may appear suicidal, it might just work. He quietly climbed out of the window. A steady flow of the naked Azrael exited the Lawn and Garden section and moved towards the back of the store. One of the large Alphas was being eaten by twenty starved nude Azrael. John quietly relocated behind the Health and Beauty and Cosmetic aisles, completely bypassing the mass eating the Alpha. He couldn’t tell which one it was and couldn’t get eyes on the other one. The herd was drawn to the music and to the aroma of death. At the edge of the aisle near the main walkway was a dead naked Azrael corpse. They weren’t eating each other, not yet. John snagged its foot and pulled it towards the back of the aisle away from the main walkway. John needed to smell like them. He didn’t fully trust the effectiveness of the new masking agent. Mainly because he couldn’t’ smell it. He cut into its malnourished abdomen with his knife. The release of putrid decay oozed out causing John to gag. He choked down the chunks, dug his hands into the open wound and drew out a slimy wad of entrails. He knew that this could save Savanna’s life and maybe his own. He coated his entire body in its foul stench and stood tall. He felt and swallowed down another wave of vomit that settled in the back of his throat. Here goes nothing, he thought.
John entered the walkway and moved towards the entrance of the Lawn and Garden section. The gray lumbering bodies pushed past him eager to feast on what was left of the Alpha. John continued out into the thick blinding fog and ran his hands across the exterior walls as he followed it around back.
Chapter 11: Disappointments
“What the fuck?” Danielle spat and flicked her cigarette at the screen.
She watched John follow the edge of the building with his left hand and headed straight for the back door.
“I told you he’d live.” Savanna gloated. The color was drained from her face and her skin was wet and clammy. A pool of blood dripped on the floor beneath her.
“Get this bitch out of here.” Danielle called one of her men in. He brought Savanna to her feet and pushed her out of the room. Savanna laughed hysterically.
“Always underestimating us you old crone.” Savanna gave Danielle the middle finger as she left.
“I’M NOT DONE WITH YOUR...HERO.” Danielle hollered out the door. She was furious and it showed. Remmie, fucking open the back door.” She continued.
“Yes ma’am.” Remmie shouted back to her.
He hurried to the back door, unlocked and opened it. John stood there in a dark red film carrying five overly stuffed plastic bags in both hands. Remmie, Rich, Michael and five other armed men kept their pistols aimed at him. He sluggishly entered and they secured the door behind him. Michael and Rich removed his pistol, ammunition and knife from his gun belt. Once all of the weapons were removed, Remmie yanked the drugs out of his hands.
“Holy shit, dude. You fucking did it.” Remmie patted John on the back.
“Savanna…where’s Savanna?” John grumbled with his hands on his knees. He brought in several massive breaths attempting to calm his heartrate.
Danielle entered the room with a freshly lit cigarette. She took a substantial drag and puffed it out of the right side of her mouth.
“You left some of it.” She griped with a twitch in her left eye.
“That’s as much as I could carry.” John retorted and sat up stretching his back. Several pops followed.
“You were supposed to get ALL OF IT!” She spat at John’s face with disgust.
“Savanna?” John ignored her words and looked deep into Danielle’s sagging moist eyes for an answer to his question.
Danielle snatched a bag from one of her men and retrieved some antibiotics.
“She’s not getting an ounce of this…” She shook the full bottle in her left hand. “…until you get all of it. Are we clear?” She continued.
“Can I see her before I go?” He asked in a detached stupor. Exhaustion hid all emotion.
“Fine.” She turned around, stuffed the antibiotics into the bag and handed it back to Remmie. Follow me you piece of shit.” She walked
towards one of the rooms down the hall. She knocked on the third door on the right. “Bring the bitch out.”
A man exited pulling Savanna along by her right arm. Her face was pale but she wore a relieved smile. John knew that she would die soon if he didn’t finish the extension to his previous quest. She reached out to hug him.
“Don’t.” John backed up.
“Why…why not?” She asked in a weakened voice.
“I’m covered in this…Azrael shit.”
“I don’t care.” She stepped into a huge hug and held him as tight as her frail body would allow. “I love you so much…John, don’t go out there again.” She added.
Danielle ripped her off John pushing her to the floor.
“He’s going back in there. We need all of it.” She pointed her cigarette at Savanna with a menacing snarl. She turned back to John. “Is it that you’re too afraid to go back in there, John? Huh?” She asked while emphasizing the word afraid.
Her daughter finally heard that John had returned with the medicine and hurried down the stairs.
“He’s back? He got the medicine? That’s amazing!” She added as she rummaged through one of the plastic bags.
“I’ve underestimated you. I mean, you’re still a fucking pile of trash to me but you’ve accomplished the impossible and that says something about you.” She added and helped Savanna to her feet. “Take Savanna back to the room, clean her up and give her some of…”
Danielle knocked the antibiotics out of her daughter’s hands.
“Fuck that! She doesn’t get that yet.”
“What? What’s wrong with you Mom?”
“What do you mean what’s wrong with me? They killed your fucking brother. You want them dead just as bad as I do.”
“I want…Remmie, Michael and Richard take them back to her cell.”
“Together?” Remmie asked.
“That’s fine. Look at her. She’s a walking corpse and he’s not far from it. If you’re worried, cuff them both.” Stephanie instructed.
“Got it. Let’s move.” Remmie pushed them both into the room with the side of his rifle.
Stephanie brought her mother to the surveillance room and shut the door. Danielle took a seat in front of the monitors and crossed her legs.
“I wanted the medicine. I did what I had to do to push him to get it for us and here it is. Frank was a dumb fuck and got himself killed. If they opened that door everyone would have died. I would have died, Mom. I thought you knew that.”
“It would have been worth the risk. I only have one son no matter how hard you try to be one.” Danielle wore a disapproving glare and pulled in another massive drag of her cigarette.
“You made me into a tomboy. Maybe if you hadn’t left, I wouldn’t have been like Frank and Daddy.”
“Donald was a weak man…a weak cheatin’ piece of shit.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Sleepin’ with that teenage harlot…What was her name?” She opened her eyes and grimaced at Stephanie.
“Tina. And she was in her twenties, Mom.”
“It doesn’t matter. That wench took your father from me.”
“What he did was wrong. But, you shouldn’t have left us. You abandoned us with him. He worked three jobs to support us. We never got to see him either. Daddy was too proud to get you for child support.” She glared into her mother’s eyes. “He should have.”
“It was a mistake. I eventually came back.”
“Yeah, ten years later and after Daddy died…from stress. And the only reason you came back was to keep us from living with Grammy.”
“That old twat never respected your father or me. She would have cashed in on your father’s life insurance and you wouldn’t have seen so much as a cent of it.”
“We still didn’t.”
“The bills were caught up and it went towards a down payment on the house. Look, I’ve explained all this to you before. You just won’t let things go. Siggy says you need…”
“Siggy?!?.” Stephanie turned her back to her mother and stood in front of the monitors with her hands on her hips. “I knew I should have kept you away from Kolovski. He’s poisoned your…” Stephanie tapped her temple with her left index finger. “…thoughts, Mom. You’re sick.”
Danielle coughed and puffed out a massive cloud of white smoke.
“Sick? You mean, prepared to do what it takes to survive.” She walked over, toggled the main display to the interior of the store and zoomed in on the Pharmacy. “It doesn’t matter. John’s going back in for the rest of it.”
“Are you mad?”
“He made it the first time.”
“Yeah, before you played that loud music and purposefully filled the entire store with the reborn and…Kirk.” Stephanie explained.
“Kirk was out there anyway. He doesn’t know we’re back here. He’ll give up like he did the other day.”
“This is unacceptable Mother! We’ve been swallowed up in all of this.” She spread out her hands emphasizing everything around them.
“Kolovski said…”
“Fuck that guy Mom. He’s too focused on his experiments to see the truth to this virus.”
“He’s changing the virus, Steph. He’s controlling…”
“Controlling what? Us? The staff? I agree with that. The virus, no. He’s not controlling the virus.” Stephanie interrupted.
“True, David and Emma were failures but what about Marcus? It did what it was delivered to do.”
“I wouldn’t call whatever that was controlling. It was strategically placed by Tricon and the scientists underestimated its intelligence. That’s all. Beyond that, it did whatever it wanted to do.”
“If we bring Kirk back. We might actually salvage all of this.” Danielle gestured towards the screen. Kirk was meandering about with his herd.
“Nothing can stop Kirk. It can’t die. How do you plan on capturing it?”
“The Awakened.” Danielle suggested.
“Remember what happened the last time we tried to use them?”
“We changed David...for a moment.”
“He lost control and went mad. The perfect weapon backfired.” Stephanie admitted. “And in his chaos, he returned to the Awakened facility and destroyed it. We can’t control them, mother. All of it has spiraled out of control.” Stephanie explained. She watched the reborn find and eat another Azrael straggler.
Danielle pointed a fresh, unlit cigarette at the monitor while still nursing a nearly depleted one within her lips. “And Kirk did the exact thing David did to our Immunities facility.”
“To feed his reborn. But as you can see…” Stephanie toggled the display to view a handful of reborn still eating the Alpha from the Pharmacy. “…they can eat the Azrael now.”
“They’ve discovered that on their own.” Danielle speculated.
Danielle sucked in deep, causing the tip of the cigarette in her mouth to glow orange. She touched the end of the new one to it.
“Kirk discovered this.”
“He what?” Danielle spat, dropping the cigarette from her mouth and into her lap. She leapt up, brushed ashes off of her lap and wiggled her legs. She placed the new cigarette into her mouth.
“Did you not see the files Mark Sloan sent of the Immunities Breach?”
Danielle scowled. She placed her wiry hands on the console and watched the reborn eat the Alpha.
“I don’t trust that…experiment. He’s trouble.”
“Neither do I. Yet, he’s survived the process longer than Kirk.”
“Because of you. And here we are…sent as bait to catch your fuck up.” Danielle shook her head.
“Kolovski wanted results faster. Kirk’s body wasn’t ready for the evolution and died. There was no pulse, nothing to indicate that it was still alive for days. We even severed the spine at the base of the skull to extract brain fluid. Medically speaking Kirk should have remained dead.”
“And you buried the body on top of thousands of dead bodies but told Kolovski tha
t Kirk escaped.”
“What better place to hide a high profile corpse than among thousands of other corpses. And what was I going to say? Oh, we just wasted months of research and experiments on your dead brother and now he’s dead for real this time. He would have killed me.”
“You’re right. He was going to kill you for letting him escape had I not recommended that we catch him here or return with all that was within the Pharmacy.”
Danielle toggled to Pharmacy camera. She could still see a good amount of drugs on the shelves.
“We have plenty of medicine now. Ignore the rest.”
“He’ll know that there’s more.”
“How? Who will tell?” Stephanie asked.
Danielle lowered her voice to a whisper and moved in closer to her daughter. “The only people I trust in this world are in this room. I told him we’d bring back Kirk or all the drugs from the Pharmacy. That was our deal. I’m in no position to change it.” She turned away, paced back and forth scanning each monitor with frustration. She bit her lower lip with the left side of her mouth while still nursing the cigarette with the right side of her lips.
The Azrael (Book 5): Prisoners Page 7
