by Ryan, Matt
“I’m not feeling too good,” Hank warned, wobbling around before falling to the ground. The blanket he held fell with him and the smoke poured into the room.
“Hank.” Julie ran to him. “He’s alive.” It was the only thing she got out before she fell to the floor next to Hank.
Lucas’s adrenaline and anger raged through him. These people were trying to kill him, kill Julie. He wouldn’t allow it. Both of his best friends lay at his feet and he knew what he had to do. Stumbling to the back of the room, he grasped a loaded Prudence in his hands and fell to the floor.
HARRIS STARED AT THE COMPUTER screen in disbelief. Every computer system and power grid MM controlled had been wiped out. Each bunker and factory was silent to all pings. Their security systems were blind, nothing but a black void.
“One minute until we land,” Jack said.
“Can they see us entering their airspace?”
“No, I don’t think they even have a radar setup, let alone GPS tracking. They’re completely crippled.”
“I wouldn’t count them out.” Harris gazed out the window to MM’s headquarters just below. “I’m getting changed.”
He took off his shirt and pants and pulled out something he hadn’t worn in a long time. He slid his hands through the black sleeves and buttoned the shirt. They were clothes that at one time had felt like home. Now, the shirt and insignia’s on the chest felt repulsive.
The aircraft leveled off and landed on a helipad on the roof. Jack and Harris left the craft, and found the roof empty. Harris holstered his gun and walked to the roof door. He pulled out his Panavice to hack into the coded door, but Jack simply pulled on the handle and the door opened. Harris’s eyes went wide. Was this a trap?
They headed into the building and down the stairs. Upon exiting the first door, they walked into chaos. Men and women in various black ranked uniforms ran down the halls, several pushed by Harris and ran into the stairwell. Harris grabbed one of the women running by.
“What’s going on?”
“No one knows,” she said frantically. Harris eyed her rank four insignia and let her go.
He adjusted his uniform and resisted the urge to pull it off. It made him sick to have the uniform back on, but he knew it would serve a purpose. He rubbed the tips of his fingers over the R9 insignia on his chest. It hadn’t faded after all the years.
A rank seven did a double take at his chest and stared into Harris’s eyes. He returned with an even glare, and the seven lowered his head, running into the stairwell.
Harris had figured on fighting with people—a fight with Marcus to end it all. Not a complete collapse of MM.
“Sir, what should we do?” Jack asked. “I don’t think they even care we’re here.”
Harris took a deep breath and watched the people run by. “We should go to the lower levels, that’s where Marcus would be.”
They left the chaos of the upper levels behind and descended into the bunker. The stairwell had become crowded with hordes of people running up and down the stairwell. Mostly lower ranks and service people. He tried to catch their rumors as they ran by, everything from Mutants attacking, to people getting killed in the lower levels by monsters.
The elevators had stopped working, and only the backup generators had emergency lights functioning. All of the servers had crashed, communications gone and every door hung open. Not knowing the how’s and the why’s, he quickened his pace. Another R7 passed by, he was sure some of the higher ranks recognized him—he probably trained them at some point. Yet they didn’t slow down. Some of them looked so pale from fear they could have been grinners.
They reached floor sixteen: rank seven’s floor. The people in the room didn’t even look up at him as he moved through the room. One seven had the panels down on the wall next to the elevator and was trying to reactivate them manually. He would have done the same thing.
Harris hesitated at the secure steel door in front of him with a keypad he knew well. But, had the code changed? If he entered the wrong code, it would deploy a shot of knockout gas.
“Stand back,” he said to Jack. He pressed in the first number and watched the door swing open. He couldn’t hold back the shock in his face.
“I take it, that door isn’t supposed to open?”
“No.” Harris looked at the sevens around the room and pulled Jack inside, closing the door. “This isn’t just some system breakdown, these doors are made for breakdowns, and they seal themselves automatically when something goes wrong.”
“Why would he want everything open?”
“I don’t know, but it gives me a bad feeling.”
“What are we going to do now? Our plan is pretty much thrown out.”
Harris looked at the small room filled with weapons of any imaginable type. If things had even been a hair the way he planned, he would be thrilled to be in that room. But this . . . this shouldn’t be happening. He would have to adapt to the new situation, it’s what he’d been trained to do and he wasn’t one for not taking advantage of a situation. Grabbing the one item he wanted, a rail gun, they left the room.
One seven glanced his way and did a double take. Harris winced, he knew he’d been spotted. “Hey,” the seven yelled, “you’re Harris.” The others perked up at this and dropped their tools.
Harris turned to face the man with his hand on his new gun. He quickly considered his options, fighting four sevens would take too long. “I was sent here to help. I know these systems better than anyone.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “We weren’t notified.”
“And how would they do that? Marcus himself sent the request.”
“You’re the most wanted man on the planet.”
“Listen, son, do you think I would just walk into this building if it wasn’t okay?”
The sevens all looked at each other and shrugged. “And what do you plan to do?” The man looked at his R9 on his chest.
“I’m a nine, you don’t get to question me.”
The man paused, then nodded once. “How can we help you?”
“Just stay out of my way.” Harris walked into the stairwell with Jack and didn’t look back as he descended into the lower levels. More people ran up the stairs, they were the only ones walking down. One man limped by with a bad wound on his leg and behind the ruckus of feet on steel stairs, Harris heard a scream from deep below.
He stopped the injured man and gestured to his leg. “What happened?”
The man looked up with his pale face. “They bit me. I barely got out of there alive.”
“Who bit you?” Harris asked, but the man walked up the stairs, lost to a sea of people.
Jack looked confused. “What was that about?”
“I hope it’s not what I think it is.”
Fewer people filled the stairs the further they descended. Streaks of blood ran on the floor and walls as they reached floor thirty-two. Harris pulled out his gun and peered through the doorway. In the dim emergency lights he saw them, with their grayish skin and blackened eyes. It was a realization of what Marcus did and everything it meant. Harris gritted his teeth and gripped his gun as he glared at the grinners.
Marcus once again was a step ahead. In the moment of his possible downfall, he didn’t do the obvious and repair the damage, he did something unimaginable and fanned the fire.
Two men ran from the room, glancing back at the grinners before running up the stairs. They didn’t even glance at Harris or Jack. Harris shook his head and turned his gun onto the mass of grinners approaching. They tumbled to the ground, one after another, until no more moved. He walked further into the room, Jack on his heels.
Cracks of gunfire echoing from below brought Harris back into the stairwell. He looked down several flights and saw a man stepping backward up the stairs, firing into oncoming grinners. The precision and calmness of the man’s movement sent off warning alarms. Harris pointed his gun and awaited their inevitable confrontation. The man backed into view of Harris and glanced bac
k, and in a rare instance showed shock at the presence of Harris pointing a gun in his face.
“Harris,” Emmett said.
“Emmett.” Rapid gunfire blared from Emmett’s gun as he shot several grinners from the stairwell. “Where’s Marcus?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s the only one who could cause this and you know it,” Harris said.
Emmett looked into the darkness and fired, two grinners stumbled into the light and fell to the floor. “Can we put our stuff aside for the moment?”
Harris nodded and lowered his gun a few inches.
“We have to make a stand here,” Emmett said. “Otherwise, these things will spread and the planet will die.”
“It’s not just here, I’ve already seen people with bites ascending these stairs. We’ll need to seal off Capital.”
Emmett flinched and shook his head. “Agreed.” Emmett pulled off a radio from his waist. Harris hadn’t seen that type of radio in hundreds of years, it was a relic. “Seal the city off, no one in or out.” He looked back at Harris while firing a bullet into the head of a grinner. “If we can get to the lower levels, we might have a chance of stemming the tide.”
“Agreed.”
Jack spoke up from behind Harris. “I don’t have a weapon.”
Harris nodded up the stairs. “Go upstairs and get security to stop anyone who has been bitten.”
“Here,” Emmett tossed Jack a badge, “this will give you the authority.” He moved close to Harris, keeping his gun pointed at the floor and giving Harris his back. “I think it started down on sixty-four.”
“After you.” Following Emmett down the stairs, Harris kept his gun pointed at his back. With the other gun, he shot five grinners. He figured Emmett didn’t have a shield up with the Panavice servers down. If he was going to kill the only other rank nine, he had to time it right. “Why don’t you tell me where the kids are?”
Emmett stopped. “Marcus had them moved to Ryjack.”
Harris gripped the hilt. “All of them?”
“Poly, Joey, and Samantha.”
“And Marcus didn’t go with them?”
“No.”
Harris stared down the steps. Jack mentioned they might have been moved but the information didn’t make sense.
On approach, door marked sixty-four sat ajar. The dark room beyond had no emergency lights and he squinted, trying to make out the moving shapes.
Emmett used his Panavice as a flashlight and shined it into the room and exterminated the few grinners mulling about the near-empty space.
Harris stepped by, using his own Panavice to light up the area. The huge room was lined with chain-link cages on each side and a hallway in between. The first chain-link doors lay open. Black streaks ran across much of the floor. He passed another open gate and a grinner ran out. He shot it and moved on.
He’d never been on this floor, knew it existed but had no idea what Marcus had turned it into. Had this been his plan all along? What set this into motion? It didn’t make sense for a man like Marcus to destroy it all unless he had an out, a better opportunity.
Harris stopped and looked at the locked keypad at the next chain link door. This was the first secured door he’d seen since arriving. He stopped and spotted the piece of paper on the gate. Lowering his gun, he grabbed the note marked Harris. He opened the envelope, took out the single sheet of paper, and shined his light on it.
You can have my trophies, I’ve grown bored of them.
Trophies? What did he mean? The kids were in Ryjack. Harris shined his light into the cage and fell to his knees. A blonde grinner came running at him with her black grin and gray skin.
Compry.
It was easier to see her die on the roof than to see her as a grinner. He’d shed tears for her in private already, but felt a wet line streak down his cheek as she slammed into the chain-link fence. She thrashed her body against it and reached her fingers out. He touched the tips of her fingers, not noticing Emmett’s gun at the side of his head.
“I TOLD YOU BURNING THE chicken feathers would work better. Did you hear how fast they fell?”
“Yeah, but they better not be dead.”
“So what if they are? These are the finest looking people we’ve had in a long time. You see the size of that one? We will have the best BBQ ever, with him alone.”
“Well, you’ll have to explain to the mayor why we have a surplus of meat again.”
“Yeah, what’s the deal? People been flocking here like a moth to flame, lately. We’ve about filled up the holding pens.”
“God favors us, I guess.”
Lucas listened to the conversation between Marty and the other man. Holding back his cough, he inhaled the smoke-filled air through his nose. For some reason, it wasn’t affecting him. He was sure Marty still had his rifle and wanted to time his jump perfectly. They hadn’t walked past the bed yet, or they would’ve seen him on the floor.
“Let’s get the big boy out first,” Marty said. His voice was muffled from something, probably a gas mask. “The dang field workers were drooling when we paraded this one through the farm.” He laughed.
Lucas took a deep breath and jumped to his feet, sending an arrow deep in the second man’s chest. Marty dropped Hank’s leg and struggled to get his rifle. Lucas shot another arrow and hit Marty. He shouted in pain and shot his rifle into the wall near Lucas, falling to the ground.
Swaying, Lucas gripped the edge of the bed to balance himself. The smoke hurt his eyes and burned his lungs. He positioned another arrow as he approached Marty. Jaw clenched, he half wanted the man to be alive so he would have reason to stuff an arrow in his face. But he lay still. Lucas pulled his bow over his back and grabbed Julie off the ground, carrying her to the hall. He laid her on the carpet and ran back to get Hank.
The two men hadn’t moved and he stepped over their bodies to get to his friend. He couldn’t lift him, so he grabbed his ankles and pulled. Hank’s body resisted the first attempt, but when he put his entire body into it, he managed to move him a few feet. With the energy exerted, he breathed hard and the smoke filled his lungs, making the room fuzzy. He reached down and pulled Marty’s mask off his face and put it on his own. The smoke dissipated and he continued the struggle of removing his friend until they were in the clean air of the hallway.
With the gunshot, he was sure there were more on their way. Lucas pulled off the mask and stared at Hank’s lump of a body. He would be near impossible to move by himself. Running back into the room, he grabbed Hank’s bag and Julie’s Panavice. He paused, looking at the two men he killed. He wanted it to bother him more than it did.
Unzipping the bag, he found Julie’s medical supplies. Grabbing the small vial he was looking for, he cracked open the tube. The odor hit his nose and stung his eyes. He wafted it under Julie’s nose, and then Hank’s. Both stirred awake and grabbed at their noses, coughing.
“What happened?” Julie asked between coughs.
“They were going to eat us.”
“What?” Hank asked.
“I killed two of them when they came in and that Marty guy shot at me. I’m sure someone else must have heard it,” Lucas said, watching the door. “Please tell me you can move?”
Julie sat up and looked to the room. “You killed them?”
“They were going to eat us.”
Julie looked at him sideways and struggled to get to a sitting position. “Why didn’t you pass out from the gas?”
“I don’t know, I almost did. Head’s still cloudy.”
“Sniff that thing, clears it up.”
Lucas took a whiff and jerked his head back. He blinked his eyes and tried to get the burning smell from his nose. His head felt clearer. With the fuzz diminished, the fear of what almost happened hit him. “I’m sorry I got you into this, we should have found a different way.”
“I’m fine,” she coughed. “But if I go to a doctor, I’m going to have a hard time convincing him I’m a non-smoker. My insura
nce rates are going to go up now.”
He laughed and extended his hand, helping Julie to her feet and giving her a big hug. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Didn’t you say more were coming?”
“Please, I have Prudence.” He watched Hank struggle to get to his feet. “How you feeling, buddy?”
“What, I don’t get a hug?” He stood with his arms out.
Lucas ran over and jumped into his arms. Hank picked him off the ground and squeezed. “Careful, Hank, you could scuff Prudence.” Hank set him down on the ground and Lucas inspected his bow for damage.
“Is Prudence so fragile?” Hank said, teasing him.
“Good lord, I almost forgot about you naming that thing,” Julie said.
“Hey, Prudence just saved our lives.” Lucas felt the string on the bow. “And if you two are all done chatting, we need to get going. That parking lot out back is a good place to start. One floor down and we can break out a room window.”
“We’re still getting a car from this place?” she asked.
“Is there a better option?”
She felt her pocket and her eyes went wide. “My Pana’s gone.”
“I got it.” Lucas handed it over.
She slid her fingers across the screen. “If we had some servers out here, I could tell you where the nearest car is.”
“And if I had a helicopter, I could search for one.” Lucas smiled, he liked seeing Julie frustrated and without her technology, it leveled the playing field.
They collected their bags and walked down to the staircase. Sneaking to the second floor, they entered another hallway with hotel rooms. Lucas stepped from the door and put a hand to his nose. The strong smell of decay and human waste filled the hall. He looked to Hank’s bag and considered getting out the smelling vial again to fight the odor.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Julie said.
“Hello, is someone out there?” A woman’s voice from behind a door called out.
Julie raised her eyebrows and stared at Lucas. He looked around, should he respond to someone who could turn them in? Could he breathe in the air long enough to respond?
