“Keep coming,” Twist called back. And he called out streets as they crossed them so Cade could track them.
Cade guided Twist under a freeway, they never noticed which one, but the street they were on got bigger and wider, Cade’s voice calm all the way, calling out directions. Odin was crying, saying, “You gotta go faster, she’s hurt bad….”
Danny shouted, “Zero, where’s the hospital?”
Cade said, “You should be right on top of it, it’s off to your left….”
There it was. Twist made the hard turn into the hospital and Cade guided him through the parking lot around to the emergency room and Twist said over his shoulder to Odin, “We’ve got to leave her. She’s been shot, the police will be all over us. We’ve got to leave her.”
“Can’t leave her,” Odin cried. “Can’t just dump her.”
“We have to,” Twist said. He jammed on the brakes immediately in front of the emergency room doors. Cruz and then Danny pulled in behind.
—
On the boat, all the lights came on. “Dammit, we missed someone,” Harmon said, looking up toward the ship’s castle. He, Shay, and X were crouched by the rail at the bow of the boat. They couldn’t see the bridge from there, but then, whoever was on the bridge couldn’t see them.
Shay, on her phone, told Cade, “We’re stuck here. Tell everybody to keep going, they can get us later. Tell Cruz, make sure you tell Cruz, or he’ll try to hang back.”
Shay said, “Okay, Harmon, what now?” As she said it, a searchlight at the top of the mast, apparently controlled from the bridge, burned across the boat and, from there, probed down the riverbank, and then into the open water of the river.
“Looking for us,” Harmon said. “Don’t think going for a swim would be a good idea. Not right now, anyway.”
“And so…,” Shay said, like a kid waiting for the magician to pull the rabbit out of the hat.
Harmon had nothing. “There’s a saying in the Special Forces,” he said. “When in doubt, hide.”
—
Shay called Cade back and said, “Call all the cops! Has anyone called the cops yet? We’re gonna hide.”
Before she hung up, Harmon said, “Tell him if we’re down inside the hull, we won’t be able to use our cell phones. Tell the cops we’re down there—don’t shoot us.”
Shay repeated that and then said, “Gotta go,” and punched off.
—
Twist ran across the sidewalk to the hospital entrance and held the door for Odin and Cruz to carry Fenfang though. As they passed, Twist looked down at Fenfang. Her eyes were closed, and a small bloodstain had soaked through her shirt, immediately over her heart. Cruz glanced at Twist and gave a terse shake of his head.
There was a nursing station inside the door, staffed by a single nurse, and Odin cried, “She’s hurt bad, she’s hurt bad.”
The nurse hurried out from behind the station and a few feet down a hallway, got a gurney, pushed it toward them, and said, “Put her on this, put her head on this end….” As Odin did that, she picked up a phone and pushed a button and asked, “What happened?” and Odin said, “She was shot. Somebody shot her.”
The nurse spoke into the phone, and they heard it come from overhead: “Dr. Rice to ER, code blue. Dr. Rice to ER….”
Cruz said quietly to Twist, “Hold the hospital door open, then open the back door on the Jeep and stand by to close it.” Twist nodded, understanding, and Cruz walked up behind Odin, wrapped his arms around him from the back, pinning Odin’s arms at his sides, then picked him up and staggered back toward the door as Odin kicked and spit and fought against him. The nurse said, “Wait, you can’t go, the police—”
Twist said to her, “Take care of Fenfang. X-ray her head. You’ll see.”
His tone stopped the nurse in her tracks, and he said, again, “X-ray her head. Call the newspapers, call the police, show them what they’ve done to her head.” The nurse looked back at Fenfang on the gurney. The wig had slipped partly off her skull, and the gold electric knobs winked in the overhead lights.
Odin was twisting, fighting, crying, but Cruz ground on through the doors. Danny was there, and Cruz yelled, “Get the door on the Jeep.” Danny popped the back door open, and Cruz stuffed Odin inside, then climbed on top of him and held him down.
Twist was in the car two seconds later, said, “Okay,” and Cruz hopped out and slammed the door before Odin could sit up, and Twist peeled away. Odin got upright and tried the door handle, but the Jeep was out on the main street and moving too fast. “You gotta let me stay!” he shouted at Twist.
“Can’t let you stay, Odin!” Twist shouted back. And then he was on the phone to Cade: “Get us out of here!”
Cade’s voice, still calm and clear: “You’re heading toward the freeway, Highway 4. Go west….”
They drove west, listening to Cade. He told them that Shay, Harmon, and X had been trapped on the ship and that they were hiding, waiting for the police to arrive.
“Shit,” Twist said, fear clutching at him again.
After they’d driven a handful of miles, Cade directed them to an exit, and they pulled into a closed Chevron station, Twist and Odin, then Cruz, with Danny coming up behind. Odin virtually fell out of the backseat of the Jeep. He sat on the concrete, head between his knees, and began vomiting. Cruz went over and sat next to him, putting an arm around his shoulders.
Danny looked at Twist, the question written on his face….
“We think Fenfang’s gone,” Twist said. “She had a bullet wound right over her heart.”
Danny staggered away, pulling on the dreads at the sides of his head in grief.
Twist called after him, “Cade called the cops, told them about the shooting and the prisoners.”
Danny turned back, looking down the freeway. “Where are they, then? I never saw a single cop car coming here.”
“Maybe there’s a faster way from wherever they’re at,” Cruz said. “We gotta get back there. We gotta help Shay.”
Danny: “Nobody ever saw our vehicles. One of us…or all of us…could drive past there, see what’s going on.”
“Let’s do it,” Twist said. And to all three: “I told the nurse to X-ray Fenfang’s head. We should call them now, and tell them that she was executed by the same people who used her like a laboratory animal. The same ones who were holding those poor people on the ship.”
Odin lifted his head. “Put that out on Mindkill. Some people will see it. Get Cade to bring it back up, put it out there. Make it impossible for them to get at her…make it impossible for somebody from Singular to claim her body and hide it. Put her movie out there, the interview.”
“We can do that,” Twist said. He looked around at everybody. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this happened.”
“If the cops moved fast, they’ll get them all,” Cruz said. “Let’s go, I want to see it.”
They piled into the cars and drove back to the freeway, retracing their route to the ship.
Twist led with Odin, followed by Cruz in the truck and Danny in the Volvo. As they got closer, Odin said to Twist, “Shouldn’t there be more lights?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening,” Twist said. Danny, on the phone, said, “Don’t slow down when we go by. Keep it moving.”
They passed the turnoff where they’d parked the cars, and then they were at the open concrete pad where the RVs and SUVs had come in.
And they saw a single cop car, with flashing lights on the roof, and a cop walking back to it. He got in the car and killed the flashers.
Behind him, the pad was empty. No RVs, no SUVs.
And the ship…
The ship was gone.
—
Deep in the hull of the ship, toward the bow, in a niche made by three supporting beams, Shay and Harmon crouched in the dark. The ship was moving: not quickly, but steadily, the engine turning with a powerful hum. Above them, in a den-like cove where the two sides of the ship join
ed to make the point of the bow, X lay quietly, watching the space behind them.
So far, there’d been no lights, no search parties.
“Wonder where they’re running to?” Harmon said. He had been digging in his backpack and now came up with an LED flashlight. He turned it on, twisted an adjustment ring, which dimmed the light to a thin glow. He took the rifle off his shoulder for the first time, pulled the magazine, checked it in the light, slapped it back in place.
Getting ready for combat, Shay thought. But there were so many of them….
“Once they’ve got the test subjects all corralled, they’ll probably do an inch-by-inch search of the ship,” Harmon said. “Did you see how many of them there were?”
“No, but there were three big RVs for the prisoners, got to figure three or four guys each, that’d be, maybe, twelve? And four SUVs with two guys each, that’d be eight more. So maybe…twenty?”
“Twenty is about eighteen too many, plus they’ll cut Butch and Jim loose….”
Shay was quiet for a minute. “One good thing.”
Harmon: “Tell me.”
“We got ’em cornered.”
After a few seconds, Harmon started to laugh.
Harmon slowed and grabbed Shay’s shirt. “Getting close to the street. We need to call Twist again.”
“Not yet,” Shay whispered. “Somebody’s coming behind us.”
Harmon turned, listened, then pushed her shoulder down. “Lie flat. It’s one of the guys from the ship.”
They froze in place, beneath a boat, with an axle between them and the approaching man. He’d chosen the same route they’d taken, for the same reasons: it was open enough to move quickly, and yet still provided cover.
The man came on and, just as he got to the boat, dropped into a crouch, looking ahead…and then his eyes turned toward them.
Harmon said, “Freddy, I’m pointing a pistol at your head.”
“Goddammit, Harmon, that was you, wasn’t it? Back on the ship.”
“Yeah. Where’re you going?”
“A long way from here. I’m done; so are some of the other guys. Ginsburg and me are hooking up and heading for Mexico, and then maybe further south. Maybe go to Africa. There’re some jobs there.”
“How’d that happen?”
“The ass is falling off the company,” Freddy said. “And we’ve all been talking about you. When we signed up, we didn’t know what we were getting into. But there’s some bad shit going on and Thorne’s lying to us. It ain’t legal—no way.”
“No way,” Harmon agreed. “You got a ride out of here?”
“No, we’re running. Man, I walked through Baghdad in the dark, right in the middle of the war, so I won’t get caught here…if you let me go.”
“You got a gun with you?”
“A nine.”
“Keep it in your pocket. You try to ambush us further up the line…well, we got the dog with us, he can see in the dark, and he’ll tear your face off. I’m telling you, Freddy, he’ll kill you.”
“I’m not messing with you anymore. I’m out of it.”
“Go, then,” Harmon said.
Freddy started to move away, but then stopped and said, quietly, “I appreciate this, letting me go. So I’ll give you something. There’s another Singular base that you guys don’t know about. It’s in the desert, a little less than two hours by private jet, southeast of San Francisco. Mostly south. Might’ve been Arizona, or New Mexico? There’s a good private landing strip, but not much else, wherever it was. I flew it four times as security, and to pass out drinks and keep an eye on the passengers. The passengers going down were normal, but coming back up, most of them had had some kind of surgery done on their heads.”
Shay asked, “Old people? Rich people?”
Freddy said, “Didn’t see you back there. You the chick who shot Thorne?”
“Yes.”
Freddy chuckled. “He is really pissed. You won’t want to spend any time with him, you know, in private.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” Shay said. “So, old people? Rich people?”
“Yeah, I’d say so. Wrinkles and bling.”
“Who were the pilots?” Harmon asked.
“Two guys named Walt and Barry. No last names. Got a feeling they flew for the agency at some point. Hey—gotta go. You guys take care. And, honey—stay away from Thorne.”
Freddy faded into the dark.
They gave him a minute; then Shay pulled her own gun and said, “I got this. Follow me.”
* * *
Excerpt from Rampage copyright © 2015 by John Sandford and Michele Cook. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
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