by Gregory Colt
“Breaking him was easy. It didn’t take long before he was screaming. He screamed and screamed like nothing I have ever heard, looking everywhere around him, focusing on things not there, calling out for people who did not exist. He shredded his arms, his wrists, his hands, everything on those chains trying to break free. I was worried he would swallow and choke on his own tongue.”
I shuddered and convulsed in tears. No, Adrian. No… no.
“Right before he was gone, when the hunger surged out of control, we brought little Ruby Jordan in.”
“Nooo,” I whimpered.
“Do you see now? I don’t need you to give me the satisfaction. I will take it from you.”
No. No, no, nononononoooo.
His hands brushed my tailbone as he worked the buttons and zipper open on his pants—and thunder rumbled through the building.
Chapter Thirty-One
My face was lying on an airbag. Smoke and dust filled the air, and my ribs blazed with fire where the seatbelt held me back. The steering wheel was inches away from having pinned me. And I was alive, which was always a good sign.
I undid my seatbelt and attempted to open the car door, but it wouldn’t budge. I disengaged the lock, leaned back over the gearshift, and kicked it open.
The impact disoriented me, but I knew I needed to move. One of the other reasons I chose the wall was because it was closer to the back where the covered loading areas were. I grabbed Harris’s backup pistol, and his shotgun, and headed for the back.
The two men on the roof ran over to get a better look and, for a moment, we stared at one another. I ran for the sunken loading bay before they raised their weapons.
Shots rang out behind me, plinking overhead as bullets bounced off the beams above.
I wasted no time jumping onto the platform and ran to the two large double-doors. They were locked. I chambered a round in the shotgun and took one deep breath to shake off the crash. I couldn’t remember how long it took me to get to the shelter, but I knew I didn’t have more than fifteen minutes left, at the most, before the first symptoms would begin. They would escalate quickly and then I would be down. Down was dead. For me and Claire.
I blew a hole in the door where the lock used to be, pumped in another round, and kicked it in.
* * * *
“What?” Roman yelled at the sound of someone hammering on the stainless steel door.
He jumped off the table and buckled his pants. “What do you—”
“Someone’s here,” said a man I couldn’t see.
“What do you mean someone’s here? Who? What the hell was that noise?”
“Security on the roof, they fired shots at someone, said whoever it was drove a car through the brick wall by the back. Said they entered the building from the loading docks.”
“Send everyone on the first floor to the back immediately! Block every exit! Every corridor! I want him found.”
“And down here, sir?”
“Take four of the men with you and head upstairs. I will coordinate the remaining men here and watch the stairways.”
“Yes sir.”
Roman Sawyer stepped back inside the small stainless steel room and grabbed his shirt and shoes.
“Don’t you go anywhere,” he smiled at me as he left.
* * * *
An ugly mark the shape of the butt of my shotgun formed on the man’s head before he hit the ground. I looked down the hallway behind me. Three other security guards were down, and alive. I could see them breathing, could sense how weak and helpless they were. Wounded prey.
Stop it. They’re men. They’re alive because they may not know who it is they’re working for and you will not, will not, take an innocent man’s life.
You have before.
I bowed my head to drive the thought away and the cinderblock wall exploded where my face had just been, burning me with tiny lacerations of concrete.
Two men had guns on me from the corner of the corridor, forty-five degrees behind over my left shoulder.
“Stop right there!” one of them hollered. “Drop the weapon!”
I set the shotgun down.
The two men stepped around the corner into the open hall behind me.
“Go on. Take him. I’ll cover you,” he said to his partner.
I sighed and put my hands behind my head, waiting until I heard the second man holster his gun. When he did, I hopped straight back and planted a rear kick deep into his abdomen. He doubled over my leg and flew backwards into the other man before collapsing to the floor at his feet. I leapt over him and kicked the gun from his hand. His partner rebounded from the wall and I slammed my elbow into his face with a powerful thrust. His nose popped, his head bounced off the wall, and he slid down to the floor in a heap.
I kicked his gun further down the hall and spun back around. The other guy fumbled at his holster to draw his weapon again. I jumped over and stomped his hand as he pulled it free, then kicked him across the face. I slid the gun free with my foot, kicked it back the other direction, grabbed the shotgun, and ran around the corner.
The building was large, but I knew the huge common room, and cafeteria, and rooms in the back, took up most of it. I doubted Roman conducted his side jobs in those rooms on the first floor. It would be impossible to hide from everyone. I’d seen several small basement vents along the foundation from the outside. A full basement beneath the building would be huge enough to hide about anything.
I needed to find the stairs, or maybe one of those emergency exit maps they put on the walls, or anything at all that would get me to the floor below. I needed to—
The room warped and tilted at a funny angle making want to vomit. I palmed the wall beside me to keep from falling and took two slow breaths as I waited for strength to return to my legs. The symptoms were starting. I didn’t have long. Minutes.
I ran as soon as I could manage without bracing myself. I flew down every corridor I came across looking for signs of a stairway. It was three minutes until I found a fire exit map screwed into the wall behind some plastic.
“About freaking time,” I growled, running towards it.
I slid to a stop at the intersection and looked at the map. Two sets of stairs led down. The closest was to the right, two halls down on the left, first door.
I growled again when the lights went out. A faint boom echoed through the building as the world turned to darkness and silence. It was broken by the sound of something growling back, down the hall to my right.
This is always the scene in the movies where the protagonist, in their noble bravery, moves forward one foot in front of the other, into the dark scary place, or sometimes when the big bad monsters come charging out.
I didn’t have time for bonus style points so fuck that. “I AM the monster in the dark,” I said to no one at all as I headed into the dark hall, moving faster and faster, until I was charging straight toward whatever waited.
Moonlight lit small square patches along the hall from high windows in the corridors to the left as I ran straight through. I didn’t see the three pairs of eyes waiting for me until I’d crossed through the wall of darkness on the other side.
But I was prepared for it. Reaching in my inside jacket pocket I pulled out a road flare I’d brought from Harris’s car, snapped it open setting it alight, and tossed it on the floor in front of Roman’s soldiers.
All three men recoiled in pain and howled in frustration. It hurt me, too, but I had prepared for it and raised the shotgun.
I fired as fast as I could pump new rounds into the chamber. Headshots were the only quick way to drop them, but were more likely to miss, and I still couldn’t see well.
I aimed low and unleashed an earsplitting battery of steel shot that didn’t let up until nothing happened but a clicking noise when I pulled the trigger.
I assumed nothing and kicked the flare into them where they had collapsed together several feet deeper into the hall. Blood was spattered along both walls in a very post
-modern look while pools expanded from beneath where they lay. But, when the flare hit, all three snarled and moaned. Two clawed their way up the walls to stand. The third batted the flare away and dragged himself towards me.
All I’d needed was to slow them down anyway. I dropped the empty shotgun and drew Harris’s .45.
“Now!” someone screamed as I was tackled to the ground from behind.
A fourth soldier rolled me over and grabbed my wrist, slamming it into the floor over and over until I couldn’t hold the gun any longer. I struck out with my other hand before he pinned that one as well. But, that was all he did.
I didn’t have long to wonder what was going on when I heard the three others begin clawing and fighting their way across the floor towards me.
Ah, crap. I kneed the man above me in the groin, to no effect, and attempted to twist out of his hold to even less. I screamed when I felt warm breath over my face. I don’t know if it was more anger or fear. Probably both.
I swung my hips wildly out to the side and kicked off the wall, bucking the fourth man off enough to slide one wrist out of his grip, then poked him in the eye hard as I could.
He jerked back in pain as I rolled to the other side and grabbed the flare. A powerful hand shot out to grip tight into my hair and pull my head over to expose my throat.
I shoved the flare above my head right into their faces causing more outrage and pain, but before I could bring it down to the fourth one he was on top of me. Huge hands clasped my throat and an electric bolt of terror lanced through me when I stopped breathing.
I tried bringing the flare down into his face, but he leaned forward to block my arm from rising. I tried to kick out from the wall again for leverage, but my hips were pinned beneath him. I flailed my whole body around to see what would move and brought my hands in a wide circle down to my sides.
Before he realized what happened, I stuffed the flare into the waist of his pants. He let go in a flash, arching his back with a roar, as his shirt caught fire. He threw himself off me and clawed at the flames spreading over his torso.
“No! No, no, no!” someone hollered.
I rolled to the other side of the hall, grabbed my .45, and sat up into a shooters stance. I took aim. I fired one, two, three times in rhythm, putting down the men on the floor, then pivoted to the man on fire and—four.
When he fell, a shadow behind him ran off through the moonlit corridor. My instinct was to chase him down, to enjoy the hunt, but that was followed by a small headache. A small headache and the feeling it would continue to grow until it consumed me. I tried to calm myself, but the pain continued to grow.
This was it then. With the final seconds on the game clock I sprinted for the second corridor on the left, took the first door, and flew down the stairs.
The room below was dark through the frosted glass in the door. The vents I’d seen from the surface let nothing in. I opened the door, quiet as I could, and two separate bursts of automatic fire lit up the room like a strobe light.
I threw myself to the side out of the light from the doorway, but not before a bullet tore into my hip. Son of a bitch! I should have thought of my silhouette in the doorway.
I pushed myself deeper inside the room along the wall and tried to feel how fast the wound was bleeding. There was no way I could tell for sure, but at least it wasn’t spraying out. About fifteen feet in, I bumped something off a shelf I hadn’t seen. Metal instruments clattered to the floor.
Footsteps ran along the opposite wall followed by another machine gun burst from the back corner that ripped apart the floor behind my feet. Damn that was close.
A second burst fired and this time I paid more attention. The room was huge and filled with hospital beds. Most looked empty with various apparatus around. My god, there were scores of them.
Then it was dark again. They were smart, whoever they were. Moving around in the dark was a terrible idea. Especially if all you needed to do was wait for the other person to try it and make a mistake. They didn’t need to go anywhere to kill me and they knew it. I, on the other hand, didn’t have a choice.
I moved swift and silent, feeling out with my hands, and weaving a path down low through the maze of beds. I considered the odds of a shootout and thought maybe I had a chance, but let it go after passing one or two beds I heard someone breathing in. There was no telling how many victims were still alive. I couldn’t risk them all with two machine guns firing wild at every noise. It would be a massacre.
I stood very, very slow and managed to do so unnoticed. My left foot was asleep, numb, when I took the first step. That really couldn’t be good, but I kept moving for a better position to get a look at whoever was in the room. As I walked I could feel a warmth trickle down my leg, and as hilarious as that was, not my biggest problem at the moment.
I got lucky making it to the position I wanted nearer the back corner without being heard, but it took valuable time.
I felt along a shelf at the back until I found something loose to throw and readied to take a shot at the first muzzle flash. I hated the idea of more gunfire, but, if I did it right, there wouldn’t be a roomful of victims between us.
I tossed whatever it was straight down the wall in front of me and two bursts of light erupted when it struck. One had circled around me near the stairway. The other poor bastard lit up his own outline ten feet in front of me in an open doorway on the opposite side. I’d almost hit him with the thing when I threw it.
I took the shot I knew I wouldn’t get again and fired twice at the far shadow in front of the door by the stairs. He dropped dead.
“Holy shit!” the guy right in front of me screamed as he jumped back into the next room.
I ran forward, double skipping on my right leg to keep the weight off my left hip, and charged through the back doorway.
“Now!” he screamed. He was straight ahead. I raised my gun again, steadied myself—
“Do it n—” and emptied the magazine into him.
I saw him in the strobing muzzle flashes go down in a room filled with stainless steel.
Who had he yelled—I threw myself back as a roaring mass charged me. He missed his tackle, but clipped my wounded hip with his shoulder. I grunted in pain and staggered as he crashed into the next table.
I couldn’t see a thing, but I heard the man struggling to stand below me. I had to take him down fast. It hurt like hell, but I rained heavy kicks down into him with no idea where they were landing, and not caring either. The second the man’s hands and arms stopped flailing I rolled my gun around in my hand and grabbed it by the barrel. I swung down hard in the general vicinity of his head until all was quiet and still.
Except, breathing. Maybe even something, or somethings, moving around. The silence in between was filled with the overwhelming sense of someone staring at me. The feeling of another presence.
My headache grew worse and my eyes ached. I couldn’t feel my left leg and that was really, really not good now. That needed to move up on my list of priorities. Except there was something left in the room with me. One more. I could deal with one more. Not that I had any other choice.
You could leave.
Shut up. You can leave. I’m staying. Damn it! Focus!
I readjusted my grip on the barrel of the .45 and the lights in the big room behind me came on in a sickly green haze. The man that had run off upstairs walked right through the open doorway between us raising his—oh what the hell was that? A P90 submachine gun? Are you freaking kidding me!
The light from that room filled part of this one, casting strange shadows deeper in. Some of those shadows moved. Three shadows, in fact. Three!
“Ahh, come on!” I yelled.
* * * *
Gunfire rumbled through the small stainless steel room from time to time. It frightened me, but in a much more sane way than the fear before. Crazy as it sounded I found a tiny comfort in it.
Laying facedown, while horrifying when Roman was in the room, was another source
of comfort. Not a great one, but I felt less exposed, less vulnerable. Which, of course, was ridiculous because I was still chained down naked and couldn’t move, but it was enough to keep my mind from breaking and swallowing my own tongue in fear and madness.
I wondered who was out there. Was it one person? Or more? Given how long the fighting had lasted, and how it seemed to move around the building, it must have been a small group. It didn’t matter. I’d find out one way or the other soon enough.
The door opened a minute later. My heart rate skyrocketed in anticipation. Loud crashes and bursts of automatic gunfire filled the room with the door open until the men that came in shut it behind them causing my heart rate to nose-dive off the peak it had risen to when I saw Roman turn around.
I could see Roman smile at me despite the terrible angle. He organized the three armed guards around the door and mumbled orders I couldn’t hear.
He paced back and forth at the back of the room between me and the men listening to the sounds of battle as it grew nearer. It was so close I could hear men shout and scream, or the guttural sound of rage and pain; constant crashes and breaking and scuffling. The gunfire subsided as the other noises drew closer.
“Who is it?” I asked, all awkward with my face on the cold metal table.
Roman stopped and looked down at me, a little unsure, a little confused, and a lot furious.
“Ha,” I whispered a weak laugh. It was exactly how I’d felt about Adrian Knight for half a year and it had made me miserable. Nice to see that look on someone else’s face.
“What was that?” He glared.
“It’s your turn,” I said.
“You stupid bitch. I was going to keep you alive. I was going to show you what it was all for. Now look at you. No better than the rest. I think I’m going to give you to my men who survive. You won’t last the hour. What do you think of that?”
Thank goodness for small favors. My day was already getting better. Or it was until machine gun fire erupted in the room next door. Everyone, everyone but me that is, leaned closer to the door and tried to listen to what was going on outside.
