“Sure. That’ll be easy.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy but they did it and I don’t think they’d move this stuff too far from the original entrance. Why bother? It would be easier to find a way to deliver the stuff directly to this spot.”
“What are you saying?” Rick said.
Sami felt her heart beat faster with excitement. “I think cave system was maybe some kind of back up for the original creators of the virus. Look at the layout. It’s random but the paths through the caverns are level and mostly even in width. It’s made to look almost natural but it isn’t. It may have started out as a natural formation…”
“But they adapted it,” Rick said.
“It was maybe even the original location for the lab before they decided to tunnel right into the desert,” Sami said.
“So are you saying there’s an elevator?” Josh said.
“There might have been at one time,” Sami said. “But there might also be short cuts.”
“They wouldn’t have brought the equipment in the way we came in,” Rick said. “That entrance is too tight. Maybe through where the generator is.”
He pointed behind Sami. She turned to the little room in the back.
“It’s worth a look,” she said. She moved forward. Her flickering light hit the metallic edges of the generator, throwing back flares of reflected light into her eyes. The room made a turn to the left in an L shape. She turned her head, sweeping the light into the shadows. The beam showed rock walls and dirt before flicking off. She knocked it. The light flared on… to a snarling face.
Razor claws grabbed her shoulders, pulling her closer. Breath stinking of dried blood and sickness filled her nostrils. Bile rose in her stomach. She gagged, her scream locked in her throat. She tucked her head down, trying to block access to her neck. Teeth snapped shut millimeters from her cheek. Her knee shot up. The vampire hunched over. The grip on her shoulders loosened. Sami brought her arms up and snapped them apart, breaking the vampire’s hold. Other hands behind her grabbed her by the waist, pulling her back. The barrel of a gun appeared over her left shoulder. The noise deafened her as it went off.
The vampire staggered back, hitting the rock wall and sliding down to the floor. The chest was shredded from the impact of the blast. Now from a distance, Sami could see it wasn’t an adult but a child, probably no more than fifteen. The mouth hung open, revealing typical canines of the vampire but Sami realized this wasn’t a full vampire. For one thing, the gunshot had killed him.
Josh squeezed past her, brandishing a stake.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “He’s dead.”
“No, he’ll get up,” Josh said.
“I don’t think so,” Sami said. “I think this is one of Elliott’s early experiments. He certainly doesn’t look like any of the other kids.”
A stricken look crossed Josh’s face.
“He was still infected, Josh. You did him a kindness. He wasn’t going to get better.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?” Rick’s voice came from behind her right ear.
“It looks that way.” She took a step forward but Rick’s arm still held her back by the waist.
“I don’t want you getting infected,” he said.
She pulled out gloves from her pocket. “I’ll be careful. The virus has to be directly injected into my bloodstream.” But she still snapped the gloves onto her hands before she examined the boy’s body. Besides the canines, the boy’s gums showed discoloration. The glands in his neck and under his arms felt swollen and hard. The skin along his hairline was marked with sores. Sami wished she could do a full autopsy but the risk of infection was too high. But this cursory examination showed definite differences from the original virus.
“I’m going to take some samples,” she said.
“No way,” Rick said. “You’re not cutting into him. We’ve lingered here long enough. Let’s get some of the samples from the fridge and get out. We still have to find Peter and Lucy.”
Josh was already nodding. Sami wanted to argue. The samples in the fridge were one thing but this child was another, an example of Elliott’s work. Still she knew they didn’t have time. She reached over and slid the boy’s eyelids closed.
A quick look around showed that they may have moved the equipment in through this area but any access had been closed over. Although the back wall looked the same as the others, it had a uniformness to the look of the “rock” that she realized was artificial. Why go to such trouble, she wondered. Had it been an attempt to hide the origins of this place?
She allowed Rick to lead her back to the fridge. There were still so many that she wanted to take along but she finally had to admit defeat. Mentally she started trimming her criteria and then trimmed it again. Finally she took only three of each of the five batches, fifteen in total. She doled out five vials each, slipping them into pockets wherever they could.
“Let’s go,” Rick said.
Sami checked the bottles, making sure they were snug so they wouldn’t break. “Okay.”
Her light flickered again as she turned toward the entrance and it was just the flicker that she thought created the shadow. Then Josh grabbed her arm, yanking her back as Rick brought up his gun.
A figure appeared in the doorway.
Rick crouched, ready to fire. The figure took a step and the light from Rick’s personal globe spilled across the face. Peter.
Josh cried out. Surprise lit up Peter’s face. But even with the smile, Sami noticed dark circles under his eyes and the way his shoulders sagged.
Josh bounded forward, wrapping his arms around his brother in a bear hug. So much for standard protocol, Sami thought, but life had been anything but standard lately. Especially with Peter appearing wearing only a sheet wrapped around his body.
Peter managed to disentangle himself from Josh. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“We came to get your sorry ass,” Josh said. “Shit, you can’t even stop from getting caught.”
“Sorry for the trouble,” Peter said. “But it was worth it. We found more of the kids.”
He moved further into the room and a trickle of children followed, seven in all, with Lucy holding hands with the final boy, bringing up the rear. She blinked at the lights and Sami realized they must have all been stumbling around in the dark. No, not stumbling. The children moved with sureness, almost ignoring the light. Even Peter had an air of competence in the dark. Only Lucy seemed disoriented.
Sami recognized a couple of them from the previous escape but the others were new to her. Different batches? It had to be. Maybe they could find a way to match them with the various serum. But that would have to wait until they got out.
The boy holding Lucy’s hand let go and stepped toward Peter. “Will they promise?”
“Promise what?” Rick said.
“They want to know if you’re going to kill them, like the vampires,” Peter said. “I said you wouldn’t. Are you going to make me a liar, Rick?”
Rick lowered the gun, still holding it at his side. “They’re infected but it’s different, right?”
“I would need to study them to confirm exactly how the virus has been adjusted but they are definitely different from the original strain,” Lucy said.
“Would samples of the serums help?” Sami said.
Lucy’s body straightened. “Absolutely.”
“They don’t seem hostile. They aren’t attacking or trying to spread the infection like the vampires. I don’t see a reason to kill them,” Rick said. “That’s as much of a promise as I can make until we know more.”
Peter took a breath and let it out. “Fine. But I won’t let you hurt them later either.”
“We all do what we have to,” Rick said.
“And speaking of have to, we have to get out of here. We’re being tracked and they’re gaining on us,” Peter said.
Rick’s gun came back up. “Right. Let’s head out.”
“Not that way,” Lucy sa
id. “They’re converging on us, that’s why we came in here.”
“Um, there isn’t another door,” Josh said.
“Not another accessible door,” Sami said, “but I think there used to be something in the back.
She led them to the back area by the generator. Peter signaled the children to stay put. At the sight of the boy’s body, he gave Sami a questioning look.
“He attacked,” she said.
He nodded. There was nothing more to say.
“I don’t see a door,” Josh said.
“Probably there.” Rick pointed at the back wall. “Looks a little too much like a rock wall.”
“How can a rock wall look too much like a rock wall?” Josh said.
“Uniformity,” Peter said. “I agree. The imperfections are too perfect.” He ran his right hand over the surface. “There is a door here.”
“Too bad we don’t have any way to blast through it,” Rick said.
“Maybe you don’t but I could,” Peter said. But Sami saw the way his shoulders drooped even lower.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” she said.
“Is there any other?” Peter turned to face them all, looking from one to another. “We don’t have a lot of time here.”
Sami wanted to argue; she didn’t like the haggard look on his face and the way his whole body seemed to sag, only staying upright by a force of will. Her instinct was to protect him, mother him, the way she’d always felt about Peter, the youngest of them but she also realized she was displacing her grief about Michael onto Peter. She couldn’t save one so she desperately wanted to save the other and that meant her judgment wasn’t trustworthy about this situation. She kept her lips pressed shut against her own wishes.
As usual, Rick took that responsibility for all of them. “Do it,” he said in that regular command voice he always used. Even Josh ducked his head, accepting the order. Peter nodded and turned back toward the wall. For the first time since they’d returned from that last patrol after losing Raj, they felt like a squad again, Sami thought. She let out a breath of relief.
“Let’s set up a defensive perimeter in the main room,” Rick said. “I want the children behind us in the doorway, as small a target as possible without disturbing Peter.”
They moved into the main room. Fortifications began like clockwork. Josh and Rick got one of the large tables loose and barricaded the entrance. The children clustered near the generator with Lucy. Rick took center point with Josh and Sami on either side, guns out, stakes at the ready.
As she waited, alert and focused, Sami felt something tingling in her mind. It was that same oddness when she and Peter had first met the children but it was stronger now. It grated on her nerves, making her hunch her shoulders. Her heart began to pound faster. Then a grinding screech sounded behind her.
Something hit the table in front of her. It shuddered but held. Howls of rage sounded. Multiple claws scratched at the wood. Cracks began appearing. Tiny splinters formed and fell to the dirt floor.
“Get ready,” Rick said.
“The door!” Lucy yelled.
Sami turned. The children were racing into the backroom. Rick backed up as the table began to splinter. Sami faced front again and followed Rick’s lead. Josh was first through the doorway as the top half of the table fell inward. A young male vampire began to wiggle in through the opening. Sami fired, taking the top of his head off. The body sagged but another vampire began to push through the hole.
Sami felt Rick’s hand on her arm, dragging her back. She backed through the doorway. A large ragged hole opened in the back wall. The children were already gone. Lucy bent over a prone figure on the floor. Peter! Without a word, Josh stooped and picked up his brother in a fireman’s hold. Lucy ran through the hole, leading the way. Josh followed.
“Go,” Rick said.
“Both of us,” she said.
Rick leaned through the doorway into the main room and let the bullets fly. Then he turned back to her.
“Run!”
They headed for the hole in the wall as the vampires, howling their rage, broke through.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Pain was the first thing he knew, the only thing. There had never been anything else in the world but pain. In a dream long ago there had been other things: a brother, friends, work that called to him, a strange woman wearing a turban leading him to a new underground life, but they were all phantoms. Pain was the only reality.
He had no body, only nerves that burned with fire. Sometimes the fire seemed to shift, be below him or to the side of him. He didn’t understand why it moved, didn’t know that it was he who was moving because he had no body. His senses shut down.
After eternity he felt something else in the firey pain. Was it coolness? Comfort? At first he couldn’t tell what it was or where it was only that at first there had been only pain and now there was a difference, a sensation of no-pain. He turned that sensation over in his mind as if it was a separate thing. That no-pain called to him. It saw it open a sliver of light in the darkness. A way out. A way through if he chose to follow.
He didn’t know if he wanted to. The pain was agony but safe. It was as much as he could bear. If he abandoned it would he not find himself in pain he could not bear? He vaguely remembered that happening before. He’d pulled himself back only to plunge deeper and now he was here, at a bottom he did not want to go beyond.
But still that sensation called to him. He felt it as a multitude of voices all singing the same note. Even as he fought to stay he felt it grow, blocking avenues of the pain. When the voices reached him, he tried to turn away but they were everywhere.
comebackpeter...comebackpeter...comebackpeter...
It echoed through him, quieting the fire in his mind down to the slow rhythm of breathe. His nerves no longer screamed with pain. The hum of voices soothed him, cushioned him. He remembered that he had once had a body and with the remembering, he began to feel it again. Tingles of nerves and tendons. An ache low in the back. The sensation of breath moving in his nostrils down to his lungs.
The voices stayed with him, protecting him from the rush of external stimulation. With the memory of his body returned the memory of himself. Flashes of images flittered through his mind. Lucy lying in a bed. Sami with stake raised. Josh lunging forward. Rick, arms raised in direction. Even the voices began to individualize until one stood out louder than the rest.
Trina? he thought.
We are here, Peter. Her voice said but it was a reflection of all of them, like the boy he’d met. Gestalt consciousness.
Where is here? he thought. Where am I?
You have retreated inside. We came in to get you. Your body is at the lab, Lucy’s lab.
The lab? How had they got there, he wondered.
You opened the back door, the voices replied. It was too much for you but the others brought you out into the daylight. The vampires couldn’t follow.
The flashes of memory steadied now, settling onto the image of a back room. The body of a boy had lain crumpled in the corner. An old generator hummed to itself in the other end of the room. Peter had stood in front of the false wall and pushed forward to reach the door.
His mind shied away from the memory. That way led back to the agony and he realized it was a long slow slide into full madness if not death. There was only so much of this burgeoning power he could handle on his own.
He needed his own gestalt, he realized. But that might never happen. Lucy’s cure had unleashed something inside him, making him just different enough that although he could talk with the infected children, he would never be able to connect the way they did with each other. And yet the possibilities left tiny seeds in his mind.
You need to come back, the voices said. Please help us.
Peter felt their presence pull away and the flood of sensation overtook him. Sounds roared in his ears. Intense pressure wracked his nerve endings. Breath flooded in. After a moment, it all began to settle. The roar lessene
d to a gentle hum of electricity. The pressure lightened to a thin blanket over his body and his body lying down. He felt every bit of it. His toes wiggled under the bed sheet. His hair hung by his face and tickled his shoulders. A red glow warmed his eyelids.
He opened his eyes.
Figures stood by his bed. As his eyes adjusted, he recognized Trina with Katey and Marc standing by his feet. Trina nodded to Katey and the girl hurried over to the door.
“I thought you might need a minute,” Trina said. “Should I call the others?”
Peter took a few breaths. The room stayed solid. “First Rick and then Lucy,” he said.
Katey nodded and slipped out of the room. Trina leaned over by his head out of his visual range. When she leaned back she held a glass of water. Peter managed one nod before pain laced up the sides of his head. Better to not move at all.
Trina held the glass to his lips and he managed a sip before it started to trickle down his chin. She pulled the glass back and wiped at him with a napkin.
The grating of the door opening caught his attention. Rick’s footsteps stomped as he entered. No, they didn’t stomp, Peter realized, his senses were still over sensitized.
Trina replaced the glass of water. She and Marc left. Although they tiptoed, the noise still echoed in his head. As the door slid closed, Marc glanced back over his shoulder. His small brows pulled together in a frown.
Rick stood on Peter’s left. His impassive expression hid his real thoughts, Peter knew. He’d seen that look many times but never thought he’d be on the receiving end.
“I’m okay,” he managed.
“Of course you are.” Rick’s normal tone blasted like shotgun shells in Peter’s ears, making him wince.
“Quieter,” he said.
The bland expression shifted and concerned made Rick frown. Peter managed a weak smile, trying to reassure him.
“I don’t want to tax you.” Rick spoke in a hush and Peter nodded to let him know it was a good volume. “But I need to know what’s going on, with these kids, with you, with everything.”
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