She looked around for an avenue of escape, knowing she’d better find one quickly or she was royally screwed. She could just make out the faint outline of rusted showerheads lining the far wall, and hooks for towels along one side. She saw nothing.
And then it struck her. She could see! So where was the light coming from? The grenade and muzzle flashes had temporarily blinded her night vision, but now that she was adjusting to the darkness, she could make out a small window, just above eye level, set in the center of the exterior wall. Rusted blinds hung across it, filtering in the tiniest glimmer of moonlight. It would be a tight squeeze, but she could make it. She opened up with the Kalashnikov, blowing every shard of glass out of the frame. She heard shouted instructions in the locker room, and knew the Manifold men believed themselves to be under attack.
“Armina,” she whispered loudly, “Stay where you are, and behind cover no matter what happens or what I say next. In fact, cover your ears.”
A whispered, “Okay,” was Armina’s only reply.
Queen shouted, “Hurry, go out the window,” hoping the men pursuing her would assume Armina escaped first. Another burst of gunfire replied to her voice as she dashed to the window and hauled herself up and out. “Go ahead, I’m hit” she shouted, doing her best to sound wounded. She waited there outside the window, readying another F1 and listening to the sound of pursuit as the remaining Manifold men dashed into the shower room after her. They really don’t learn, do they? She pitched the grenade through the window and relished the shouts of surprise and subsequent explosion. If Armina had stayed hidden in her locker outside the shower room, she’d be fine, but Queen couldn’t help worrying about the girl as she ran into the night.
Chapter 8
“What report do you have from the security force?” Darius’s palms were sweaty and his pulse throbbed in his temple. He had been correct about Zelda Baker, or “Queen,” as she was known. She was no ordinary operative. Though there remained a wealth of information on her that he was not permitted to access, he had learned enough to be gravely concerned that they had drawn the attention of such a dangerous enemy. The sole consolation was that she appeared to be alone rather than accompanied by her entire squad.
“Nothing in a while.” Andrew’s voice was tight. “The last report I had was that we’d lost two men, but they had cornered her in a locker room in the stadium. No one has reported back since.” He turned and fixed Darius with a nervous look. “I don’t know what to do now.”
“We have to assume she’s eliminated the security squad, and will soon be coming this way. Continue trying to reach the men in case any are still alive.” Darius ran a hand across his bald pate, feeling the ridges created by old scars. “If she reaches the amusement park…” He paused, relishing the expectant smile on Andrew’s face, “Perhaps we shall have the opportunity to play with a few of our toys.”
Queen vaulted a concrete barrier and turned back to watch the concourse. She hated leaving Armina alone, even for a short while, but she had to make sure she’d eliminated the Manifold force before going back inside. If any of them remained alive, they should soon be coming out after her. Cautiously, of course, but they would come. Eyes and rifle trained on the locker room entrance, she counted the seconds in her head.
One minute…
Two minutes…
Three minutes…
That was long enough. Finger on the trigger, she hugged the wall as she made her way back to the locker room. That last grenade must have finished them. If any of the men remained alive, surely they would have come out by now. She rounded the corner and entered the tunnel just as a black-clad man stepped through the doorway.
He was quick, but she was faster. She put a single round in his gut—the only round left in the Kalshnikov, but it did the job. He fell hard against one of the doors and slid to the ground, leaving a smear of blood behind him. His own rifle fell from his hands, forgotten as he pressed his hands over the wound, seeking in vain to hold the life in. Like so many men before him, he’d believed himself immortal. Queen could tell it from the shocked disbelief in his eyes, but he’d get no sympathy from her. She drew her Mark 23 and took aim.
He looked up at her, saw his death reflected in her eyes, and grinned. “You’re too late. Your girl is dead.” Malice dripped from every word.
“You’re lying.” She suddenly felt numb. It couldn’t be true.
“Zelda! Is that you?” he mimicked. “She took a bullet on the ricochet. It might even have been you who did it to her. Who knows? I finished her off for you, so the way I see it, you owe me a quick death like the one I gave her.”
“Liar!” Queen hissed. She drew her knife, determined to make his last moments on earth the most agonizing time of his life.
“I even got a souvenir.” His voice was now raspy, almost a death rattle. He only had seconds left. He held up a digital video camera. Queen recognized it immediately.
She roared like a feral beast, all her rage and frustration boiling over. Forsaking both of her weapons, she kicked the man square in his grinning mouth. Teeth shattered and blood sprayed his face. She kicked again and felt the satisfying crunch of breaking bone. She spun, putting all her power into the kick, and drove her heel into his temple. His neck snapped, and his head lolled to the side, the grotesque remnants of his last wicked grin lingering on his face.
She dashed into the locker room, still clinging to an irrational hope that the man had lied to her, but deep down, she knew it was not so. When the beam of her flashlight fell on Armina’s slumped figure, Queen’s throat tightened and her vision clouded. No! She would not cry! She had known pain all her life, and seen enough death for a hundred lifetimes. She would not let this break her.
She knelt down and drew Armina close to her. “I should have protected you,” she whispered. “You deserved better than this.” Dark memories of her own teen years came unbidden to her mind. She thought of her alcoholic father, her mother’s tragic passing and years of feeling like an outcast and an oddity. Miseries that led her down some dark paths before she found her way again. Life should not be that way. Children should be kept safe from the darkness of the real world. Armina had been almost a young woman, true, but she was still innocent.
Queen kissed the girl on the top of her head and laid her back down. She would ask Deep Blue to make sure Armina’s body was returned to her family, as well as Oleg’s to his family. Right now, though, she had unfinished business. She shined her light down on Armina, taking a long look at this innocent victim of Manifold’s wickedness. She let the anger wash over her, soaking her to the bone with righteous rage. She would see to it that this evil was punished.
She returned to the dead man and gave his body a quick search. He had nothing useful on him—his Kalshnikov was empty and any reloads he might have carried must have already been expended. He bore neither a knife nor a handgun. She was about to leave him when something caught her eye—a tiny headset. She slipped it off and held it up to her own ear. She heard nothing at first, but then someone spoke.
“Sweeper squad, do you copy? Anyone copy?”
“I copy,” Queen growled, pouring into her words every bit of anger and hatred she could muster.
“Who is this?” Surprise rang in every syllable.
She yanked off her bandana and used it to rub away the makeup concealing her bright red skull and star brand. Meant to scar her physically and emotionally, the brand had instead become a reminder of her strength—of what she could overcome. She embraced the symbol of the Death Volunteers and made it her own. “The Angel of Death,” she said. “And I’m coming for you.”
Chapter 9
Queen knew she was being much more reckless than she ought to, but they already knew she was here and, likely as not, they would be taking up defensive positions, hanging back and waiting for her. It had been impulsive to announce her presence and her intentions that way, but she wanted blood. Deep Blue could feel free to be as pissed off as he liked, but for her, thi
s was no longer an intelligence-gathering mission.
The Ferris wheel, the amusement park’s most prominent feature, loomed up ahead, a dark silhouette in the moonlight. Everything around her was as silent as death.
“Where are you?” she whispered. She hoped her hunch about the amusement park was correct, and it would lead her to Manifold’s headquarters. She passed a dilapidated booth where jagged chunks of broken glass gleamed like fangs in the window casing. A graffiti artist had painted a sinister, yellow eye on the side of the booth below the window. She knew the Pripyat Funfair had never actually opened to the public, the Chernobyl disaster having forced the city to evacuate prior to its scheduled first day of operations. She wondered if excited children had watched its construction, just waiting for the moment they could walk up to this booth and buy their tickets for the rides—children who had no idea that death loomed just over the horizon. Kids like Armina, who never had cause to contemplate their mortality. She felt an ache deep within her soul. When had she gone so soft? How could a girl she scarcely knew have worked her way into Queen’s heart in so short a time? Maybe it was her worry over Rook that was twisting her insides.
Rook.
No, she was not going to think about that right now. She’d lose her focus, and that could mean death.
A predatorial growl saved her.
She didn’t see the oborot that made a mad dash for her, but its throaty sound of hunger snapped her thoughts back to the present just in time for her to pivot out of its way as it grabbed at her. As she sprang to the side, she grabbed the creature by the back of the neck and forced its throat down onto a triangle of broken glass twice the size of her hands. The oborot made wet, gurgling gasps as its life’s blood poured from its body, oozing down the side of the booth and covering the yellow eye in a red veil. It made a few feeble swipes at Queen, each weaker than the one before, until finally it went limp. The shard of glass snapped under its dead weight, and the oborot slid face-first to the ground.
Queen used her foot to roll the oborot over onto its back. She could tell by the other wounds it had sustained that it was the same creature she’d fought earlier. No wonder it had died so easily. It had probably been on its last legs when it came after her, but unable to resist its hunger or lust for killing—whatever it was that drove the beast. She couldn’t spare time to examine it closely, but it was much less animal-like than she had expected. It was a muscular man. His face, neck and forearms were covered in hair, but the hair was not coarse like typical body hair, but fine. Its fingernails were long and thick. Otherwise, she saw little else to distinguish it from an ordinary human being.
“What’s your story?” she whispered. Did you sign up for this duty, or are you another one of Manifold’s victims? Are there many more like you? She hoped not, but she had a feeling her one-woman war would only get more difficult from here.
She scanned the amusement park, trying to decide where to begin. To her left was a broken down boat-swing ride, the ship in which riders sat lying on its side. Up ahead lay an old bumper car ride. Patches of moss and weeds grew all over the old track, and a couple of upended cars were scattered about, while others sat, as if waiting for the ghosts of Pripyat to hop in and go for a spin. It looked to Queen like the bedroom of a child who hadn’t picked up his toys in a long time. The roof, if there had ever been one, was gone, leaving only the metal framework that provided electricity to the cars.
In the middle of the track she spotted a trap door. She hurried to the bumper car ride, vaulted the side railing, and made for the door.
She had only taken three steps when she heard a gentle whirring sound, and the closest bumper car shot toward her. She leapt out of its way, but it caught her heel and sent her stumbling forward. Before she could recover her balance, another car careened into her. She rolled up over its hood and fell heavily onto her side, blood filling her mouth as she bit her tongue. Damn! Was someone controlling these cars?
Both cars had turned around and were coming at her again, bouncing over the uneven track. She took off at a dead sprint, easily outdistancing them. Another bumper car came in from the side, almost upending her, but she was ready, and leaped over it. As she hit the ground, she heard a satisfying crash as the three cars collided.
Reaching the trapdoor, she hauled it up and tossed it to the side, aware that the bumper cars were coming for her again. She shined her flashlight down into the hole and was disappointed to see that it was merely a small mechanical room no more than six feet across with no doors or trapdoors inside that could take her any farther. Scratch that off the list.
She had no time to ruminate on it, because the bumper cars were almost on top of her again. She made straight for them and leaped onto the hood of the center car. The moment her foot touched down she jumped again, leaping past the moving car. Falling forward, she rolled, though her backpack made it more of an awkward tumble.
“Impressive,” a voice said as she came to her feet. For a moment, she thought she had left the Manifold agent’s headphone on, but then she realized the voice was coming from all around her. Nor was this the voice of the person she’d heard speaking through the earphone. This man had a deep, smoky voice brimming with arrogance. “You shouldn’t have come here, Queen.”
Lighting flashed all around, or so it seemed, but Queen quickly realized they were strobe lights set each corner. Disoriented by the flickering, she turned and ran for the nearest side rail. The world seemed to move in slow motion, a black and white slideshow played out before her eyes. Another car shot toward her and she couldn’t avoid this one in time. Pain lanced through her legs as the car smashed into her shins. She fell face-first onto the hood, her breath leaving her in a whoosh. Wincing, she pulled herself up, thinking to climb inside.
The car cut sharply to the left and screeched to a halt, sending her tumbling to the ground. “You had no idea what you’d find here, did you? No…you wouldn’t have come alone.”
Queen heaved herself back up to her feet as a circle of cars converged on her. Her body was battered and she ached from head to toe. I hope no one else on the team finds out I got my ass kicked by a bunch of bumper cars. As the cars converged, she sprang into the air. The cars came together with a resounding crash, and she came down on top of one. The cars immediately backed up, seeking to keep her hemmed in. She managed to maintain her balance for a moment, and as the car started to whip around, she jumped as high as she could.
The world disappeared and reappeared again and again in the flickering of the strobe lights, giving her the feeling that she was slowly rising, as if she were floating to the surface of a dark lake. She caught a glimpse of the metal framework above the ride, and grabbed for it. Sharp burrs cut into her hands as she clenched the rusted metal. She swung forward and reached out for another bar, intending to make her way out monkey bar-style.
That was when the strobes went out.
The sudden absence of light blinded Queen, and she found herself holding on with one hand and clutching air with the other. She dangled there until her fumbling hand finally caught hold of another bar and she hung there, listening to the sound of the bumper cars circling in the darkness below. How had a children’s ride turned into a school of hungry sharks?
“I don’t understand why you’re a concern to Richard Ridley. I assumed you’d be smarter,” the voice said. “Don’t you know you should never touch the metal over a bumper car ride?”
The meaning of his words flashed through Queen’s mind an instant before a sharp, painful tingling ran down her arms and through her body. She found herself momentarily unable to let go, but the force of her spasms jerked her hands loose, and she hit the ground, her arms and legs twitching and her skin tingling painfully. The voltage had not been sufficient to kill a person, but was just strong enough to drop her to her knees and set her muscles to twitching. Unfortunately for her adversary, it also reminded her of the electric shock torture General Trung inflicted on her before branding her forehead. The memory fuele
d her anger.
The cars were coming again. She could hear them converging on her from all around. Her night vision returning, she staggered sideways, toward the rail that surrounded the ride, and braced herself for another impact. She was still ten feet from freedom when the ring of cars closed in. She spotted one of the broken-down, overturned cars nearby, and she hurled herself into it, the impact knocking it back down onto its wheels.
Two of the bumper cars smashed into her car, knocking it a few feet toward the side rail. Two more cars struck it, sending her even closer to freedom. She eyed her goal and readied herself to jump for it, but just as she made her move, the car hit a sinkhole in the broken track and upended.
She crashed hard into the rail, but managed to drape one arm over it and haul herself up. More cars were coming, and she rolled over just as they crashed into the fence.
Queen caught her breath for a moment, waiting for the voice to return, but the man stayed silent. “Nothing to say now?” Queen said. She didn’t know if the man could hear her, but she said a few choice words about his mother, just in case. Regaining her feet, she was aware of every bump, bruise and scrape on her body. Now she really wanted to hurt someone.
Chapter 10
They know you’re here and they’re toying with you. It’s not safe. You’ve confirmed Manifold’s presence, and you have sufficient reason to conclude they’re conducting experiments on humans. Get out with your ass intact, report to Deep Blue and let him handle it from here. Then you can get back to looking for Rook. Queen knew she should listen to that small voice in the back of her head, but other parts of her mind were giving counsel as well. You must be almost there; otherwise, they wouldn’t have bothered turning the bumper car ride into a death trap. And why haven’t they sent any more men after you? Maybe you’re about to breach their last line of defense. The loudest voice, however, cried out for revenge. That was the one she listened to.
Callsign: Queen - Book I (A Zelda Baker - Chess Team Novella) Page 5
