by Bianca D’Arc
Reno landed the chopper, dropping into the small clear space between the mansion—in what she now realized was one of the more exclusive parts of Lloyd Neck—and the tree line. Xavier jumped out, then turned to help her out of the chopper. She didn’t really want to go back in there, but she knew they had to tidy up and make sure none of those monsters were left—either the human or the zombie kind.
Xavier started dropping transmitters, counting as he went. She followed, guarding his back and scouting the grounds as best she could in the darkness before dawn. It had been one hell of a night.
“…eighteen, nineteen and twenty,” Xavier counted off as he dropped the last transmitter near the house.
“Negative contact on the boat, sir,” Reno said over the radio. “There are a few small pleasure craft out here. I saw something a lot bigger and faster leaving earlier. It took off down the coast at a rapid pace a little while ago. I marked the coordinates as far as I could.”
Xavier had given Sarah one of the small tactical headsets in the chopper, so she heard Reno’s report.
“Come back and land for now, Reno,” Xavier ordered. “You can do a wider sweep as soon as we’re through clearing the house.” He switched off the mic and turned to her. “Ready?”
Sarah took a deep breath and nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”
Together, they entered through the broken glass door. Xavier paused to flip on the lights as they went through the rooms. He’d put on thin latex gloves, as she had, before they set foot in the house. It was now a crime scene.
They went through the place room by room. Though there were signs of life on the ground level, the rooms upstairs were completely empty and looked like nobody had lived in them for a long time. They went back downstairs to the great room, where Xavier took a few minutes to go through papers that had been left lying on a coffee table while Sarah looked at a small collection of entertainment DVDs near the floor-to-ceiling television screen. Nothing jumped out at her as being important.
Xavier finished with the papers, leaving them just where he’d found them. There was nothing of use there, either. “When I found you, you were in the kitchen. Where was Sellars keeping you before you got free?”
“The basement. He’s got a laboratory down there, plus an office.” She jerked her chin toward the stairs. “The door locks from the outside. Sellars didn’t take time to secure it as he was leaving. He had a duffel bag over one shoulder, a handgun in his left hand and a cooler bag in his right. I believe he had my blood samples in that bag.”
“So he was traveling light,” Xavier mused. He popped the hinges off the door leading to the basement and set it aside. “This way nobody can lock us down there,” he explained. “Reno, we’re going below,” he said over the radio. They’d both heard the helicopter come in for a landing outside the house. “Stay in the cockpit and stay sharp. Alert us to any problems you might see coming our way.”
“Roger that, Captain,” came the pilot’s ready reply.
He started down the stairs, Sarah on his heels. He flicked the lights on and the basement was fully illuminated.
“He was on the phone in here,” she said as they neared the door to the office.
“Looks like he left some of his paperwork behind.”
There were open notebooks on the desk and printouts that looked like they might’ve come from the monitors that had been attached to Sarah earlier. Other than the odd bits of scientific data Sellars had left in his rush to get away, there wasn’t anything else of interest in the small room. They moved on down the hall.
There was another small office. This one was completely empty. The third door led to a walk-in closet filled with scientific instruments, supplies and protective gear. They closed that door after a cursory search and headed for the large laboratory. Xavier whistled through his teeth when he got his first good look at the large space.
“He kept you in here?” Xavier seemed to be looking around for a likely spot, but couldn’t locate one.
“In back.” She had to clear her throat before she could continue. “There’s a room in back. He had me in there.”
Xavier made his way toward the back of the huge lab and stopped short. She stopped as well when she saw what was in front of him. It was a bank of windows that looked in on the room where she’d been tied down. Now that the lights were on she realized the room was more than just an examination room. It was a full-fledged operating suite. Complete with the observation area in which they now stood.
“Son of a bitch.” Xavier strode forward, stopping in the doorway to the room where she’d been held. “He had you strapped down to the table?”
The answer seemed important to him. In fact, his response was filled with anger and dismay. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was taking her capture and subsequent treatment to heart.
“I couldn’t move when I first woke up. It was dark. Then he came in and put an IV in my arm. He drew a lot of blood, then left, leaving me in the dark again. I managed to get my arms free and I was able to reach the tray over there.” Her gaze went to the tray that she could now see was filled with lethal-looking medical instruments. “I found a scalpel the hard way and used that to cut the straps below my waist, then wriggled out of the top half of the restraints.”
“Let me see your hands, baby.”
The tone of his voice touched her deeply. It was filled with a mix of concern and regret. She held out the hand that had been cut.
“It’s okay, Xavier.” She was quick to reassure him as he removed her glove and examined her hand. “It healed fast.” Her hand still sported a smear of blood but was otherwise fine. Not even a faint line was left to indicate the slice that had been delivered to her fingers when she’d grabbed the business end of the scalpel by mistake.
“Damn.” His expression was filled with remorse. “I’m so sorry, Sarah. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I blame myself for everything you’ve been through tonight.”
She took a step closer to him. “Don’t, Xavier. It’s all right. I got out of it and you came to get me. It all worked out.”
“But you shouldn’t have had to go through any of it.”
“Blame Sellars. Not yourself. All you’ve done since I first met you was try to help me.” She placed a palm over his heart and he covered her hand with one of his.
They stood there for a long moment, looking deep into each other’s eyes. Finally, Xavier broke the spell.
“You’re too lenient with me, Sarah.” He leaned in and placed a peck on her cheek before stepping back.
The small grin he gave her was like sunshine coming out after a long rain.
“Let’s finish up here,” he said. “We both still have a lot of work to do before we can call it a day.”
In full agreement, she helped him go through the laboratory for anything that might be of use to them. They found nothing other than Sarah’s weapon and personal items—including her wallet and keys, which they retrieved from a drawer—and then left the more intense search to the technical crew that would follow after. They headed back upstairs to do a final sweep of the grounds before rejoining Reno at the helicopter.
When they had searched the grounds to Xavier’s satisfaction, they circled back and climbed into the chopper. She wasn’t surprised when Xavier told his man to head for the campus.
“What happened to the girl?” Sarah asked him.
“Her name was Donna.” His tone was filled with regret. “I don’t know if she made it. She’d been bitten and had fallen unconscious when I realized you weren’t behind me. In the excitement I…I left her. Damn.”
“It’s okay.” She reached for his hand, squeezing his fingers in reassurance. “We’ll find her. Maybe she was one of the lucky ones.”
But when they got to the scene, the girl was nowhere to be found. They marked the dead on both sides of the tracks with transmitters and did a cursory search for the girl, but she was a tiny thing, and the small patch of woods was bordered by concrete ro
ads and walkways on three sides. Where she went after she hit the sidewalk, they had no idea.
“If she’s turned, she’ll show up tomorrow night. If she hasn’t, maybe she went back to her dorm or the hospital,” Sarah thought aloud.
“Good point. I’ll make some calls and put campus security on alert for her. If they can find her during the day, all the better. Otherwise, we’ll check back for her tomorrow night.” Xavier was already on the phone as they made their way back to the chopper.
Reno had found a nice empty parking lot to land in, which had been cordoned off by campus security at Sarah’s request. When she’d run interference with the campus guys they’d been more than willing to help. She took a moment to call and thank them before hopping in the chopper.
Reno headed for the coast to the laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor without even being asked. It went without saying Xavier would want to check on Sam at the earliest opportunity. They’d completed their duties as quickly as possible and now it was time to see to their wounded.
The lab at Cold Spring Harbor was world-renowned. In the prelight of dawn, they spotted the SWAT vehicle near a quaint little cottage decked out with gingerbread trim. One of the surprising features about this laboratory was that the exterior was just the way it had been when people lived there. The outside of many of the buildings on the sprawling campus hid some very high-tech equipment within. A Tudor house could contain giant silver isolation labs.
There were a few buildings that were more modern. The main building nearest the road housed a cafeteria for employees as well as state-of-the-art conference and meeting rooms. The individual labs followed a winding pathway of small roads and walkways all along one side of the cove. From the opposite shore, one would never know there was a world-class laboratory just across the way.
The helipad was on the roof of the main building. It was so early that not many people were about. Still, they drew the attention of laboratory security. Reno interfaced with them, and they were granted permission to land.
“Looks like our SWAT friend smoothed the way for us,” Reno reported. “He told security to expect us and give you an escort directly to Dr. McCormick’s lab.”
“Good man,” Xavier commented. He seemed impatient to get on the ground. Sarah understood the feeling. His best friend and executive officer had been in bad shape the last time they saw him.
Xavier had taken the toxic ammo and weapons, storing them in one of the lockers onboard the helicopter. All Sarah had at her disposal now was the handgun he’d given her. She tried not to remember the kind of ammunition it carried. She still wore her police uniform—dirty and tattered as it was—so the security officers who met them on the roof didn’t question her right to carry a weapon.
Likewise, Xavier was in uniform, and they had both been vouched for by the leader of the local SWAT team. Tomlinson had definitely coordinated things on their behalf, for which she was grateful. Lab security had a golf cart waiting for them.
Reno stayed with the helicopter. No doubt there was too much sensitive equipment onboard to leave it unattended. Sarah and Xavier climbed into the golf cart and they were off. She was surprised to find lights burning in a few of the buildings they passed. Apparently, there were a few people who either had got up way too early or had stayed much too late last night working on their experiments.
“Some of our people keep odd hours when they have experiments running,” the kindly older security officer said as he drove them toward the far end of the laboratory grounds. “They tell me that science waits for no man.” He laughed with the slight wheeze of a longtime smoker. “When their experiments are incubating, they have to be here to perform the next step no matter what time it is, so we keep round-the-clock security. The neighborhood isn’t dangerous compared to some others, but we still get a few calls to walk people to their cars at odd hours. Women can’t be too careful in this day and age.”
Sarah agreed but didn’t say anything. The older man seemed more interested in talking to Xavier, anyway. She didn’t care why. The long hours and the stressful activity of the night were beginning to catch up with her. She was as tired as she’d ever been, dirty and hungry, too. Now that the adrenaline rush had dissipated, she was crashing fast.
The golf cart stopped and Xavier climbed out first, offering a hand to help steady her. It was obvious he knew what kind of state she was in. The small, encouraging smile he sent her way helped to revive her a little. They’d go see how Sam was doing, and then, finally, she could maybe get some rest.
Xavier didn’t let go of her hand once she was on the ground. He turned to thank the security man, then headed up the walkway to the front door of the cottage. He didn’t bother knocking. He just opened the door and went inside.
What met them on the inside was like something out of a science fiction novel. Three silver bubble isolation labs were spaced around the open interior. The pretty little cottage housed a state-of-the-art high tech facility complete with three private offices in addition to the trailer-sized bubble labs and a separate room where they could see a bed through the open door.
Sam was in the bed and Dr. McCormick was at his side, as were Sergeant Tomlinson and Private Kauffman.
The men had both looked up when the outer door opened. They came forward, out of the bedroom and into the lab area over to Xavier and Sarah. Tomlinson spoke first, in hushed tones.
“He just fell asleep,” the SWAT commander reported. “He had a rough time of it, but the doctor had him well in hand.”
“What happened?” Xavier asked in a clipped tone.
“Sam went into convulsions twice more,” Kauffman reported. “Each time was less severe. The doctor thinks the worst is passed. She just said he’ll probably sleep it off now and will likely be okay when he wakes.”
“Thank heaven for that,” Sarah muttered.
Tomlinson’s eyes narrowed. “The doc won’t even hint at what your friend was exposed to and I’m not going to ask. I understand the concept of top secret. As I’ve already told you, I don’t like being kept out of the loop, but I’ll accept it for now. The minute this stops being a federal matter and starts affecting the local population, I expect to be called.”
It was a bold statement. Sarah respected the other officer’s willingness to get involved in something that was clearly more dangerous than even his normal activities on the police force.
Xavier shook Tomlinson’s outstretched hand. “I won’t forget your help tonight. If things get out of our control here, you’ll be the first to know. Let’s all pray it doesn’t come to that.”
“Amen,” Tomlinson agreed. “Do you need me to stay? I could loan you a few officers to make sure Dr. McCormick remains safe.”
“Thanks, but no. I’ll make provisions for her with my people.” He glanced toward Kauffman, who nodded. “You’ve already been more help than I ever expected, Sergeant.”
“Just doing my job.” He tipped an imaginary hat in their direction as he headed for the door leading to the outside. He was gone a moment later.
Sarah followed Xavier into the small bedroom where Sam lay sleeping. The normally robust soldier looked pale and sweaty. After all, Sarah realized, he’d been in a molecular fight for his life unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. Dr. McCormick got up from the chair at Sam’s bedside and motioned them outside the room so they could talk. Kauffman reclaimed his spot, keeping vigil at Sam’s side.
“He’s resting, finally. I think he’s done with the convulsions, although I will continue to monitor him until he wakes up again. I don’t know what I’m going to do when Dr. Caruthers gets here. He’s my new boss. A Nobel laureate. I’m his research assistant along with one other, Dr. Roberto. He’s off today, but Caruthers expects me to help him begin a new experiment today.”
“Don’t worry.” Xavier pulled his phone from the holster at his waist. “I’ll get you some help. I hope you don’t mind losing this job. After the miracle you just worked for Sam, I think our Uncle Sam will wa
nt to put you back on the payroll.”
McCormick smiled, and Sarah could see her expression was filled with relief. “I don’t mind. I actually prefer to be running my own experiments. Being knocked down to research assistant was a blow to my ego, if I’m being brutally honest. I’d like the opportunity to pursue the antidote to this contagion. It’s worked once, but I’m sure it could be improved upon. We were lucky with Sam. He had the right antigens and the strength to live through the ordeal. Given time to devote myself to this project full time, I’m sure I could come up with something much better.”
“All right, then. I’m going to make a few calls. What time do you expect Caruthers?”
“He never gets here before nine thirty.”
“Good. That should give us just enough time.”
Dawn broke while Xavier made his calls. Dr. McCormick had shown Sarah where the small bathroom was located and left her with a set of clean scrubs she could change into. There was even a shower and plenty of hot water. Sarah took full advantage of it, washing from head to toe twice over. She put on the shapeless scrubs, grateful just to be clean for the first time in many hours.
She rejoined Xavier a half hour later. By that time, he had everything lined up. Commander Sykes was on his way and would take over from Kauffman where Dr. McCormick was concerned.
Xavier seemed reluctant to leave, but fatigue was also riding him hard. They walked slowly back to the main building and the waiting helicopter, enjoying the beautiful surroundings and manicured landscape. Swans and Canada geese crossed their path on their way to the reedy shore, and Sarah even spied a small white egret standing in the shallows.
“These grounds are really beautiful.” She had a plastic bag filled with her dirty clothes and weapons in one hand, the other hand was held securely in Xavier’s. He was still in uniform, so he was still visibly armed. She’d thought it wise to keep her weapon hidden, considering her nonregulation state of dress.
“I never knew this place was here before our mission started. Who knew a world-class biomedical research facility was hidden up here in this upscale neighborhood?”
