That was as far as his thoughts got, when the screaming started.
Chapter 22
As they walked up to the sixth floor, Cate, listening for trouble, kept thinking about how her career, and possibly even her life, was over. They would lock her up, or execute her, if she survived long enough to be officially dealt with.
She wasn’t scared, not of her impending punishment, at least. She wanted, desperately, to be able to find out more about the pigs, and the newly vaccinated prisoners. This botched project couldn’t be her legacy. Not after everything she’d done to make it here, to make a difference.
Cate guessed the vaccine had somehow made the pigs stronger, or more immune to blood-borne toxins. They hadn’t died, of course. Dead was dead. She guessed that the poison running through their blood had stopped their hearts, temporarily, just long enough for them to test as dead.
She wished Stan had shared this information sooner. That, of course, was the rub. If he’d shared the information, they wouldn’t have moved on to human testing.
She’d always known Stan was sleazy, but she thought he’d at least respected the basic ethics of scientific study, the code of the researcher. She wished that he cared more about science than his career. He wasn’t just trying to cure the world of vees, he was trying to be the first to do it, to get all the credit.
Marisol and Cate stepped out onto the fifth floor. They were across the other side of the building from the labs where Cate worked. This was the research floor, so there were more labs on this side. It was a different department, and different departments at the NVIA weren’t into sharing. Cate had no idea what they did in these labs. Probably something to do with killing or stopping vees.
This area appeared to be deserted. Cate didn’t think any of these researchers had been working after dark. If they had, they weren’t here now. She saw no one and, more importantly, heard no movement.
As Marisol stepped into the hallway behind Cate, she looked around nervously.
“I think it’s clear,” Cate said to reassure her. Marisol just held her gun more firmly towards Cate, as if she refused to be tricked.
“What are you going to do? What are you going to say, when we get there?” Cate asked.
“Listen, it’s not personal.” Marisol, for a moment, seemed to genuinely feel bad. “Personally, I like you a lot better than some of your co-workers, but you can’t work here anymore. Whatever your motives, you are the enemy.”
It was what Marisol wasn’t saying that concerned her the most.
Cate asked, “And, in terms of my leaving, do you know how you want to handle that?”
“No, I don’t know, not exactly. Cate, I don’t want anything,” here Marisol paused to choose her words more carefully, “anything unfortunate to happen to you. But this night is going to be investigated. Every detail of this night is going to be examined, and you’re so much at the center of this, in so many ways, that I can’t see a way for what you are to remain secret. I just don’t see that happening. I’m sorry.”
Marisol was right. Once the vees were contained and the building was secured, there would be time to go over and over every last detail. Even without her secret, there would be much she could be blamed for. The fact that she was a vee just ensured that she would never see the light of day.
Marisol said, quietly, as if respecting Cate’s thoughts, “I don’t think we should stay here. I think we should get to a room with doors.”
Cate laughed. It was stupid, thinking or worrying about this, when there were hordes of hungry vees lose in the building. Safety first. “Yeah. Sorry.”
She turned and they started walking towards her lab. Tonight would probably be the last time she would see her office.
They walked past smaller labs. The big ones, like the area where she worked, would be on the far side of the building, behind them. These labs were for running quick tests, like processing guest blood samples.
Cate could smell the blood. They had some stored nearby and it was making her hungry. In all the excitement of the day, she hadn’t had time to take lunch, to get to the refrigerators where they stored the fresh blood. She was already starving and now it seemed she might never be able to eat again.
They walked out into the lobby area, where the elevators were, and Cate stopped short.
“Wait.”
Cate had a clear view into the reception area of the lab. There were bodies on the ground. She turned to Marisol and could tell from the expression on her face that she saw them too.
And then the smell hit her and she gasped.
Marisol, frightened, whispered, “What. What is it? Do you hear something?”
Cate was trying to process it. Her senses were overloading. How could that be? It was the smell of the prisoners, the vaccinated prisoners. It was coming from the direction of her lab, from the bodies, she guessed. They had the smell of rot, not like a person killed by a vee at all, but like something entirely new.
Marisol hissed emphatically, “Cate. What should we do?”
Cate couldn’t bring herself to answer. There was no answer. She couldn’t do anything other than look, and smell, and try to piece together the mystery.
Cate covered her nose with her sleeve and began walking towards the reception area as if entranced. Marisol hung behind until Cate had gotten almost to the doors and then she ran and caught up, sticking close.
Cate opened the glass door and the fumes almost made her pass out. The bodies smelled like carcasses in the advanced stages of decomposition. They reeked like rotten meat.
Marisol, stepping into the room, wasn’t as affected by the smell. She didn’t gag, just covered her mouth, and looked away. It was a brutal sight. Cate had seen worse. This wasn’t personal.
Cate would never get used to the smell, but she was beginning to cope with it. As Marisol hung back, eyes averted, Cate moved towards the body on the right to start the examination.
She studied it without touching. When you didn’t know what you were dealing with, it was always best to stay clean. That the guard had been bitten was obvious. By what was the question.
The bite looked like it had been made by human teeth. Vees had the same teeth pattern as humans, but vees bit the skin to get to the blood. This was different. These bites were chewed and, judging from the lack of debris on the ground, Cate guessed they were also swallowed. And, whereas a vee wound was often very clean from the ex-sanguination, these wounds looked almost gangrenous, like the flesh was melting away from the openings post mortem.
That was not supposed to happen. Dead flesh didn’t continue to change. Dead was dead. As that fact sunk in, Cate had a horrible thought.
She stood up quickly, to warn Marisol. Too late. As she turned, Cate saw the other dead guard rise. He moved quickly, with the speed of a vee, and was biting down into Marisol’s shoulder before Cate had time to scream.
If only she’d known about the pigs sooner, she could’ve prevented this. Dead was dead. This was something else.
Chapter 23
“Wow, didn’t see that coming.” Jerome stood up from behind the desk where he had taken shelter next to Daniel.
How had he not seen this coming? Daniel knew Stephen was bad news. He should’ve killed him when he had the chance. Instead, he’d dragged him along, let him in on his plans, all for what – because it made him feel good to have an audience? He’d let himself get careless and now everything was at stake.
“Is he gone?” Lisa started to pull herself up from the floor in the corner, where she’d been hiding long enough for everyone to forget about her. It was painful to watch her try to stand. Daniel stepped to her side, more to spare himself from having to watch and listen to her struggle, than to give her a hand.
“Thank you.” She accepted his help without even cringing. She must be tired.
“Yes, he’s gone, and not likely to come back.”
Daniel knew exactly where Stephen was headed with Carl. He smiled to himself. Stephen was probably fi
nding out right about now that Carl did not know exactly where to head, or, at least, not how to get there. Carl was a genius. He knew everything there was to know about computers and networks and all that kind of stuff, but he couldn’t find his way out of a small closet. Daniel wasn’t worried about Stephen finding the server room first, he was just hoping Stephen didn’t kill Carl in frustration before they got there.
Daniel pretended to merely tolerate Carl. That was a game they’d been playing for nearly ten years now. He was a weird kid, not the type Daniel would’ve ever imagined being friends with, but they had become friends and he wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him. Besides, Daniel owed him.
Fifteen years ago, Daniel had still had hopes of a peaceful resolution with the humans. He was the primary face and voice of the vee lobby. It seemed like progress was being made, like the humans were considering co-habitation.
Politicians didn’t want to make any official moves until they could take the temperature of their constituents. There were a lot of back room meetings and private negotiations. All the while, Daniel spoke out in public for vee rights, and politicians spoke out for stronger security to fight the vee threat. Daniel was still an optimist then. The public was divided, and he knew he only needed a few key policy makers to back his plan for integration for the country to come around.
There was one more secret meeting to attend - one more night of negotiating locations for vee reservations, guidelines for vee and human visitation, and decisions about blood farming regulations. These were real concerns and he expected a real debate. When Daniel got to the meeting, it was a trap.
Daniel was captured and locked up, and there were no witnesses. The public would think he was just gone.
They kept him alive, he guessed, so they could bring him out and show him off if needed. That was their mistake. One night, three weeks after he’d been caged, Carl showed up at his cell. He was a pudgy 19-year-old human with a bad case of body odor. Still, Daniel didn’t receive many visitors, so he’d take what he could get.
“You here as food?” Daniel asked through the tiny hole in his door that wouldn’t fit a finger let alone a juicy vein.
“Haha. You’re funny.” He laughed, like it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard. Daniel thought the kid might be crazy.
Then Carl had opened the outer transfer door, a one foot square metal flap that opened onto a small opening in the wall. Daniel had a second door in his cell which would only open once the outer door was closed again. Carl put something in the chamber and closed his side.
Daniel’s heart started racing the second he opened the inside door. There was a blood bag, something he sorely needed. Daniel had wondered if they’d given up feeding him. It had been nearly four days since his last meal.
Daniel bit into the bag right away, draining the contents much too quickly.
Before the kid walked away, leaving Daniel alone with his meal, he tapped on the door with his knuckle and said, “Don’t forget to dispose of the bag.”
A weird thing for a guard to say. Normally they left without a word. As Daniel’s heartbeat slowed to a normal rate, now that he was no longer on the verge of starvation, he held the bag up towards the hole in the door. They hadn’t bothered to give him a light in his cell. Vees had fantastic night vision, but it was still too dark to read in his room. As he held the bag up to the small streak of light coming in from the hallway, Daniel saw a barely legible, tiny note written on the bag in black marker. The note read, “I’m getting you out. Be ready. Destroy this bag.”
Daniel had smiled to himself, not only at the prospect of being free, but because the kid had thought he needed to write “destroy this bag.”
In fact, Daniel had a lot of doubts. Over the next three days - days and nights of no food, or light, or visitors - Daniel had gone over and over in his head every detail he could piece together about this young, smelly human. It hadn’t left him with a lot of confidence. He was starting to think the whole thing was a psychological game introduced to torture him.
Carl had shown up on the fourth night. Through what had turned out to be a plot formulated and set almost entirely in action via back end computer programming and document forging, Carl had essentially gotten Daniel released into his custody, with no questions asked. Turns out, if you had a permission slip from the right person, federal agents would believe just about any lie.
Once Daniel was free, and he and Carl were in a safe house, Carl had asked for only one thing in return - he wanted to be a part of the vampire revolution. In a way, Carl’s little request was what started the whole thing.
Now Carl was the prisoner. Daniel was certain Stephen would kill Carl, once Carl had finished with the servers. Daniel wasn’t going to let that happen.
“So, you just gonna let him get away like that? I mean, is that it?” Jerome asked.
They weren’t the team he’d wanted, they were the team he had. Daniel gave Lisa and Jerome his most leader-like and confident smile and said, “Nope.”
Daniel grabbed spare ammunition for his gun. He got Jerome to do the same. He thought about giving Lisa a gun, but she was generally so frightened that he could see her doing something stupid and trying to make a break for it. Even a stupid gunshot wound could kill.
“Are we going after them?” Lisa wasn’t looking happy at the prospect.
“In a manner of speaking.” Daniel replied. “We’re going where they’re going, only we’re going to get there first.”
Beating them to the server room wasn’t the problem. The problem was, Daniel had no idea what to do once they got there. Without Carl, Daniel couldn’t wipe the data. Without the hard drive Carl held, Daniel wouldn’t own the data. He needed Carl alive and he needed the hard drive. The key was separating Carl and the hard drive from Stephen without getting Carl killed in the process.
Daniel turned to Jerome and Lisa. “Let’s all take a field trip. We’re going to that little building where all the computer servers are kept.” Daniel could work out the details as they walked. The one thing he knew he needed for certain was a distraction, and for that, he was going to need bait. “Lisa, be a darling and lead the way.”
Chapter 24
Stan was grabbing his arm and pulling him back, as if trying to stop Mason from leaving. Althea was already clearing the cabinets away from the door, Frank helping.
Stan urged, “No. What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
Mason didn’t have time to argue. The screaming from outside got louder as Althea opened the door. There was someone out there who needed his help. He pulled the arm Stan was holding sharply up, and thrust his elbow back towards Stan’s chest, knocking him off and back about two feet.
As he turned away to follow Althea and Frank into the hall, Mason was caught for a second by the look of disbelief on Stan’s face. It was shock, but also something else. Maybe satisfaction?
He would sort out whatever that was later. He hit the hall and saw Frank running towards reception. Mason could distinguish two separate screams – one terrified and the other angry. Both were female.
As he ran into the main room, he saw Frank and Althea with their guns drawn on what looked to be three people and a lot of blood. One of the women had stopped screaming.
“Move away from it, ma’am.” Althea shouted.
The woman who was standing with her back to him, seemed to be pulling at the second person, trying to drag him off of the third. As Althea shouted, the woman turned to look in her direction and Mason realized it was Cate.
All the air left his chest as if he’d been kicked in the gut. What was she still doing here? He thought she’d left, had gotten out, long ago.
“Move!” Althea yelled.
Cate finally seemed to register what was happening and jumped back. Mason saw that what she’d actually been pulling at could no longer be called a person. It had human form, but its face was a mass of bare tissue and teeth and it was tearing at a body on the ground in the way vultures rip at a carca
ss.
As soon as Cate was clear, Althea opened fire. At first, the thing barely budged, but after repeated gunshots, it finally stumbled off its prey, and fell over.
Frank advanced towards the body. Mason moved closer, gun drawn.
Cate was looking between the body on the floor and the monster lying next to it. “Make sure it’s dead!”
Frank moved right up to the foot of the body on the floor and fired a few more shots into the creature. Mason was close enough to see what was left of the head splatter into bits and pieces along the floor and wall.
“It’s dead,” Frank said proudly, as if it were him, and not Althea, who’d done most of the shooting.
Cate was still standing, locked in place, staring at the two bodies. Mason hung back. She hadn’t seen him yet and he didn’t want to add to her distress.
When she spoke, however, she sounded amazingly calm. “We need to be sure. These things are different from vees.”
Frank looked at Cate like she didn’t understand how amazing he was. “We know that. Taking the head off does the trick.”
As if that was all she needed to hear, Cate ran over to the woman’s body on the floor and started checking for a pulse. After a second, in which Mason assumed she confirmed that the woman was dead, Cate crumpled into a ball on the floor, hugging her knees and taking deep, gasping breaths.
He couldn’t stop himself. He walked over to her and put his hand on the back of her neck. “Cate.”
Her gasping ceased and she looked up at him. He’d thought she was crying, but there were no tears on her face.
“Mason.”
She looked so relieved to see him, almost happy. He relaxed and realized he’d been holding his breath. She stood up and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face into his chest.
The V to Z Trilogy (Book 1): Caged Page 12
