Hell & Back (Outbreak Task Force)

by Julie Rowe

  The elevator doors closed, and they began descending.

  “Why not?”

  “Because the power to the elevator, the bottom level of the level-four lab, and all its systems is completely separate from the rest of the building.”

  That wasn’t as reassuring as he obviously thought it should be. In fact, she’d be lucky if she didn’t end up with a stress ulcer, tension headaches, and a fear of her phone notifying her of an incoming text.

  She swallowed down the bitter taste in her mouth. “They had enough information to devise and plan a way to get past a whole bunch of your security measures quite quickly. Won’t they know how to shut off this separate power source and leave us stranded underground with no way out?”

  “The power source for this floor is located underneath us.”

  If it was underground…how did that work? “Like a generator that runs on fuel? I know some hospitals use them.”

  “Those are old-school. What we’ve got are batteries charged with solar panels integrated with the exterior windows. Their design makes it appear as if an artist etched the glass.”

  “Art with a purpose?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged, jiggling all the stuff he carried. “The batteries are also charged by a heat transfer system powered by geothermal energy.”

  “Two power sources are better than one?” It came out sounding blasé, and she slapped a hand over her mouth. Where did that come from?

  “Steady,” Henry said, frowning. “We’re not going to die.”

  What did he do, consult his Magic 8 Ball when she wasn’t looking? She managed to keep that remark from escaping her mouth. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. This is my house. No one gets to come into my house and trash it.”

  She winced. “I think they already did. I mean, the security room looked completely destroyed. We lost a couple of really expensive microscopes in the lab where you fought the other guy.” She shivered just thinking about that creep.

  Henry sighed and shook his head.

  She eyed the grenades as they swung back and forth. “And then there are the explosives they used to blow up our side of the armored wall.”

  The elevator dinged, and the doors opened, allowing them to leave, but Ruby was the only one who got out. Henry did something else on the control board that asked for a second retina scan. He gave it, pushed the emergency button, then exited. The doors closed, then the elevator and all its controls went dark.

  She stared at it, certain her eyes had to be wrong. “Did you just shut down the elevator? Like you told me to do only if one of the bad guys got close?”

  “Had to or we’d be having very unhappy company way too quickly.” He headed for the men’s change room.

  “But you can turn it back on…right?”

  The door swung shut behind him.

  Ruby rushed to follow. She stopped just inside the door. “You can turn it back on, right?”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t even look at her.

  Her stomach dropped in a sickening rush. Oh, this was bad. Very, very bad.

  She cleared her throat. “Henry?”

  He grunted but still didn’t look at her.

  Her mouth had gone drier than the Sahara, but she managed to spit out, “Why are we in here?”

  He did look at her this time. “Because the change rooms are the only places without security cameras.” He pulled out two handguns. “And I didn’t want anyone who might be watching us from the outside knowing what I brought down here for extra gear.” He set the guns on a bench then dug around in the duffel for more. “I changed the passwords and locked them out, but it’s possible they put in a back door.”

  Ruby moved in closer to see what was in the bag, but there was so much stuff in there she couldn’t make out more than parts and pieces of a variety of weapons. A lot of weapons. He could start his own gun store with what he had in there.

  The queasy ball in her stomach turned into a heavy, cold stone. “Is this…our last stand?”

  He stopped what he was doing and looked at her, though he didn’t immediately reply.

  Finally, after staring at her for a couple of seconds, he said, “Possibly.”

  “Is there an emergency exit?”

  He dropped his gaze. “No.” His hands went back to rummaging in his bag.

  Did he just lie to her?

  The weight of three stories of rock and dirt above her seemed to quadruple between one heartbeat and the next, pressing on her chest, compressing her lungs until she could only take in a tiny bit of the air she needed to live.

  She closed her eyes and focused on maintaining a steady rhythm of inhales and exhales. Do not pass out, do not pass out.

  “What are you doing?”

  Henry’s voice interrupted her concentration, but not her reaction to his dishonesty.

  “I’m…tired.” While true, it wasn’t the whole truth, or even a big part of it. She closed her eyes again. “And scared, and angry.” With the terrorists, the mercenaries, and with him.

  Her eyes popped open. Anger seemed to burn away some of the pressure, and she could breathe a bit easier. She couldn’t ignore what he’d just done. It could end up killing them both.

  “You just lied to me.” Her voice broke on the last word, and a sob nearly made its way out of her throat. She cleared it so she could continue in a more even tone of voice. “If you don’t want to tell me something, just say so. Don’t lie to me.”

  “Oh, you mean like when you didn’t tell me about your brother getting kidnapped?”

  So now his behavior was her fault? “I explained why I couldn’t tell you about that. You said you were okay with it.”

  He slammed a handgun onto the bench in front of her. “You didn’t follow orders.”

  “What orders? I did what you told me to do.”

  “I told you where to hide in the security office, but you weren’t where you were supposed to be.”

  “Someone was coming and that spot wasn’t a very good hiding place, so I found another one.”

  “I damn near had a heart attack when I couldn’t find you. Then, when that pro showed up, I thought you were already dead.” He shouted the last word then froze. “Fuck,” he muttered and closed his eyes. When he opened them again and spoke, his voice was back to normal. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Those moments when I thought you were dead…they gutted me. I’ve lost people before, but they were soldiers. You’re not.”

  So, she was a civilian and he felt responsible for her? Lovely. It seemed like every time she opened her mouth, things between them got worse. Either she didn’t do what she was told or she did them wrong. He might feel responsible for her, and stress sex was better than no sex, but he didn’t trust her.

  It was her own fault. She’d lied by omission and had gone behind his back to try to fix the problem herself.

  She mentally kicked herself in the butt. Focus.

  A glance at the bench and all the weapons there gave her a new subject to bring up.

  “Are you planning some kind of one-man-army thing? Because, if you haven’t noticed, there are two of us.”

  He looked at her then at his tidy pile of incendiaries. “I thought you didn’t like guns.”

  “I don’t, but I also don’t like dying.”

  He grunted and pulled more stuff out of his bag. “That’s fair.”

  No, it wasn’t, but she was willing to go along with the friendly brothers-in-arms shit. Boyfriend in arms? No, they’d just had sex. Really amazing, dirty, with a side of dominance that she refused to admit—even to herself—was totally hot sex. No commitments mentioned or implied.

  “Since we’re talking about fair…can we discuss our exit strategy? As in, how are we getting out of this stupidity alive
?”

  “I’m a shoot ’em and figure it out later kind of guy,” he said with a half grin. “Have you got something in mind?”

  “I need more information if I’m going to be any help at all.” Her stomach went weightless as she realized that one of their sources of information had run dry some time ago. She pulled out both her phones.

  “I’ve had no new text messages or calls in more than an hour.”

  Henry looked at his and grimaced. “Same.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “They must be using a signal jammer.”

  “Would those be hard to get? I mean, it sounds so secret agent.”

  “They come in all shapes and sizes, from something that fits in your pocket and resembles a phone to something large enough to look like a big piece of luggage. They’re really nothing more than a radio that’s sending a signal on the same wavelength as your phone. The two signals cancel each other out.”

  “So, it works on cell phones only?”

  The smallest of smiles turned his lips up at the corners. “This building has landlines. Let’s find out if they work.”

  Henry led the way out of the change room and to a small office with the name Henry Lee on the nameplate. His fingerprint unlocked the door.

  “You have two offices?”

  He paused with the door halfway open. “I prefer to call them workspaces, and I have more than two.”

  And she thought she was a workaholic. “How do you sleep?”

  He opened the door completely and stepped inside the room. “Generally, on my back.”

  Ruby rolled her eyes. “Very funny, but I’m asking a serious question. It looks to me like work is your entire life. When do you take time to just be Henry—man of leisure?”

  “Man of leisure?” He snorted out a laugh. “Is that a nice way of saying lazy?”

  “No one can work all the time. Human beings need rest and relaxation time to function at peak performance. I’ve been working with you for two months, and I’ve never seen you take an entire day off.”

  He didn’t respond; instead, he grabbed the phone receiver on the desk and punched in a number. As he waited for someone to pick up, he finally looked at her. His eyes blazed with so many emotions she had to list them to keep them straight: anger, regret, despair, acceptance, and determination.

  Each emotion stabbed a cold blade deeper and deeper into her stomach. In a life-or-death situation, some people could move through the emotional evolution of grief quite quickly. One of the emotional ends of grief was acceptance, which was a healthy response. Some people, not many, took it one step further. They created a plan they were determined to carry out, a plan to resolve the situation. A plan that was often destructive to themselves and sometimes others.

  Henry had a plan—she could see it written in his gaze. What she didn’t know was if it was self-destructive or not.

  “How bad are your nightmares?” she asked, keeping her voice even and soft.

  His gaze sharpened. “Been trying to reach me long?” he asked the phone instead of responding to her question.

  Either DS or Dozer had answered, she’d bet her right boot.

  “Nope, they must be using a jammer,” Henry said into the phone after a pause. “What’s the situation outside?”

  He pressed a button on the phone, and suddenly DS’s rough voice rang out loud and clear into the room.

  “—identified at least six combatants actively engaged in fighting to keep us out of the building.”

  “Shit,” Henry said softly. “We’ve taken two men off the playing board so far, but I don’t think at least one of those was engaged in the firefight to keep you out.”

  “There’s seven or more of these shit bags?” DS asked a near shout. He paused to growl a few unintelligible words, then continued in a slightly calmer tone, “That’s more than I expected.”

  “Here’s some more unhappy news. The two we neutralized are both mercenaries.”

  “Where is the fucking money coming from to pay fucking mercenaries?” DS demanded. “They don’t come cheap, not when the shit they’re hired to clean up is this deep.”

  “Is Dozer around?” Henry asked. “Isn’t he good at following the money?”

  “He’s back at the office. I don’t suppose you took any pictures of the two mercs you caught?” DS asked. He continued without giving either of them a chance to answer. “Doesn’t matter. Send everything you can think of to him about your two assholes.”

  “The server might have security footage of them. I’ll get him to check.”

  “How are your supplies?”

  “We’ve got enough food and water for a couple of days,” Ruby said, then added with just a touch of sarcasm, “and enough weapons and ammunition to last a couple of months.”

  “That sounds about right,” DS drawled. He sounded relieved to hear her voice. “We’re bringing in more firepower. Where are you two?”

  “We’re on level four. In the office area, not the containment section. Why? You planning on using some big guns?”

  “Might have to, to get around these dicks. How solid is the building?”

  “Designed to withstand sustained shelling. Each floor is reinforced to repel incendiary devices and other physical attacks, but the armor between the third and fourth levels is twice as dense as all the others.”

  “So, we can get creative with our targeting?” DS’s tone was high with excitement.

  Henry chuckled. “Try not to have too much fun pulling the trigger.”

  “I know how to keep it in my pants. Can you leave the phone line open?”

  “I’d rather set up a schedule to call in. There are only a half dozen landline phones down here.”

  A solid thump rumbled through the ceiling.

  “DS, are you using any of those big guns right now?” Ruby asked.

  “No, why?”

  “Sounds like someone is knocking on the door, Dad,” Henry said. “We’ll call you back.” He hung up the receiver and stood. “Let’s go see what’s going on.”

  They left the office and returned to the elevator. Henry took a flashlight out of a pocket and shined it into the dark elevator car through the narrow window in the doors. Empty. The elevator itself was dark and dead silent.

  Thump.

  “Sounds like whatever is making that noise is right above us,” Ruby said, looking up. There wasn’t any dust floating in the air this time. The ceiling on this floor didn’t have floating tiles; instead, pipes, electrical wires, and air circulation—heating and cooling venting—hung naked from hooks and clasps, attached to the solid painted surface.

  She couldn’t see any dirt, dust, or grime on any surface, not just the ceiling, but the walls and floor, too.

  “How do they clean this place, hose it down every other day?”

  Henry glanced at her. “Not quite that frequently, but yeah. The infection control protocols at this level are arduous.”

  Thump. Thump. They both looked up.

  Ruby was tired of feeling queasy. “Are they trying to get in through the elevator shaft?”

  Henry sighed. “That’s what I would do.”

  She glanced at him. He seemed perfectly calm, no tension in his body or expression. “You anticipated this?”

  He just stared at her, and she realized he wasn’t as calm as she thought. He was almost smiling, but the humor in his lips was tempered with a gaze full of dangerous glee. “What do you think?”

  “I think you look like a man who knows he’s got one over on someone else.”

  His grin widened. “Whoever gets into the elevator shaft isn’t getting out. It’s one giant mousetrap.”

  Thump.

  “Sounds like they’re trying to use explosives to open the doors. Won’t that eventually destroy things enough so they can get in
?”

  “They might get in, but I doubt it will help them. Those aren’t your average set of elevator doors. Like the ceiling, there are sheets of steel that swing into place inside the doors. On this floor and the others above it. If they do manage to break through, they’ll probably break other things at the same time.”

  “Like everything around them?”

  “Something like that, but I don’t think they’re going to have time to break through. Our guys have bigger guns coming, and our terrorist and mercenary friends are limited by what they brought with them. They’re surrounded and unable to move forward.”

  Thump. Thump. Thump. A loud crack that seemed to run the length of the ceiling above their heads punched its way through the air. Ruby ducked, but no debris came down.

  “What was that you were saying about them not having enough time to break through?”

  The ringing of a landline phone echoed through the space.

  “Is that DS?” she asked.

  “Find out,” Henry said. He dropped his duffel on the floor. “I’m going to prepare for the possibility of company.”

  She hurried to the phone and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

  The sound of gunfire in the background suggested DS, but someone else on the other end started talking. “Your brother is dead.”

  She knew that low, accented voice. It belonged to the man who’d communicated with her while her brother had been a hostage.

  If anyone was a threat, it was this man. Her breathing and heart rate sped up, spurred on by adrenaline and anger, but there was an uncomfortable buzz nipping at the ends of her fingers. And though that voice threw her into a state of terror, the energy of previous stress response episodes didn’t flood her system.

  Was this what happened when a person had exhausted their ability to respond to stress? Or was her lackluster response due to the fact that this time he wasn’t in control of the situation?

  She opened her mouth to taunt him with the fact she knew her brother was alive and the details of his escape, but thought better of it. Why was he calling to tell her Nate was dead? What could he gain from that?

  “You are dead,” he continued. The background noise of bullets and shouts made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “The cripple who is with you is dead.” His voice vibrated with a dark undertone infusing every syllable with threat.