by Jason Parent
“The organism and its host have already breached a sealed clean room,” Clara said. “I doubt there’s a door in here that can hold it back.”
“Then we get the fuck out of here, plain and simple,” Sebastian said between heavy breaths.
“We can’t,” Clara answered. “This place is on lockdown. If I remember correctly from orientation, that means no one gets in and no one gets out. Heavy metallic shutters have seen to that.”
“There’s always a way out,” Jordan said. “There has to be. Or at least a way to override the shutters.”
“I doubt it,” Clara said. “Our best chance of getting out of here is to destroy the organism and anyone who has been infected.”
“But doesn’t that mean—” Jordan began.
“Everyone’s been infected!” Alfie shouted.
“Everyone, then,” Clara said firmly. “ASAP used fire to destroy Molli…uh, the organism…when it first took a human host. We could set a controlled fire to keep it back while we figure a way out of the mess. Of course, we may be able to hold the organism back, but we might bring the whole research center down on ourselves in the process.”
“How do you suppose we start these fires?” Jordan asked. “Where?”
“We may not need to go to such extremes,” Alfie said. “Follow me. I have a better idea.”
Chapter Seventeen
Even as he helped carry Stearns down the corridor away from the conflagration, Dante had no difficulty sliding Stearns’s key ring off the chain latching it to his belt and using it to remove his handcuffs undetected. He slid the light metal clasps into his back pocket then reached around Stearns’s waist to offer stronger support.
They had managed to put some breathing room between themselves and the skittering horde of human-flesh insects, but they’d lost their flamethrower, not to mention half their security team. And from what Dante knew of Stearns, they’d lost their better half.
“How did you—” Stearns blurted, his spectacular powers of observation finally alerting him to the fact that Dante had shed his cuffs like a snake its skin. He shoved Dante away from him, shrugged Belgrade off, and grimaced when he placed weight on his injured foot and drew his sidearm, leaving his rifle hanging from his back.
Dante raised his hands. Only one witness, and he appears to be Stearns’s bitch. This does not bode well.
“What’s gotten into you?” Belgrade asked as he shoved his coworker back.
Dante smirked. Surprise, surprise.
Stearns shook but kept his pistol trained on Dante. He shifted more weight onto his good foot, beginning to look a bit like a crane. “Back off,” he said gruffly, low and menacing. “This guy’s the reason we’re in this mess.”
“In case you’ve already forgotten, he and I just carried your sorry ass halfway across this building. He helped save your miserable life.” Belgrade scowled. “And we don’t have time for this bullshit. We – no, you – need his help if you expect to get anywhere on that foot—”
“He’s the reason my foot is like this in the first place!” Stearns snapped through teeth gritted due to either pain or anger. His finger tightened against the trigger but didn’t squeeze it.
“It’s no use,” Dante said to his more reasonable companion. “Belgrade, is it? Stearns won’t, Stearns can’t, let me live. Do you want to know why? Well, you know I got into the clean room, but did you ever ask yourself how I got in there?”
Stearns growled. He squirmed under his collar. “Shut up,” he said, sweat rolling off his forehead.
Dante had no intention of shutting up. “He can’t let me live, not knowing what I know about him, what your late associate Romanov learned about him. Stearns, here…. Well, he’s not playing for team ASAP. Oh, no.” Dante laughed. “He’s playing for a different team altogether.”
Stearns’s growling grew fiercer. He was more rabid dog than crane. “I said shut up!” The gun shook in his hand. With it held high, he hobbled closer to Dante, who remained perfectly still. “Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!”
Another guard barreled around the corner, the Australian guy with the injured eye. He skidded to a halt, inches from Belgrade’s AK-47, which was raised and aimed at the Aussie’s good eye.
“Whoa!” the man shouted. “It’s me. Monty. They didn’t touch me! They didn’t touch me!”
No one moved. Stearns never took his eyes off Dante as the guard squinted down the barrel of his FN 5.7 tactical-grade semiautomatic pistol. His finger twitched over the trigger. The hammer slowly drew back.
“Hey, mates,” Monty said, giggling awkwardly. “We don’t have to fight each other. There’s a whole army of—”
A vent cover crashed onto the floor at Stearns’s feet, barely missing his wound. His gaze shot toward the ceiling, his hands and gun following. He screamed and got off one shot before what looked like a swollen human arm, fingers curled to form a hand-shadow snake, dropped down from a square opening. The warped appendage descended on Stearns with the speed of a cobra’s strike. Also like a snake, the monstrosity had fangs. They buried into Stearns’s head, snatched him off the ground, and lifted him into the vent.
But only Stearns’s head could fit in the opening. Whatever had a hold of him pulled and thrashed so fiercely that the vent buckled on one side. On the other side, Stearns’s shoulder gave way first. The vent’s edge sawed its way through from clavicle to armpit, severing the arm and cramming Stearns’s twitching, kicking body like garbage into an overfilled receptacle. A trickle of urine ran down one of his legs. From the smell, Dante was sure Stearns had also shat his pants.
Belgrade opened fire, sending as many bullets into the ceiling as he did Stearns. The AK-47’s barrel ran red hot.
When the ASAP man had emptied his clip, Monty nudged him forward. “Come on, mate. We have to keep moving.”
But Belgrade didn’t move. He looked shell-shocked, staring up at the ceiling with wide-eyed wonder and jaw-dropping disbelief. Dante was taking a step toward him to help escort him away when Monty bitch-slapped his coworker hard enough to leave a print.
Belgrade snorted then shook his face and body loose. “I’m good. Let’s move.”
Dante ran over to Stearns’s severed arm, watching it and the convulsing body above closely as he did. The severed arm still had its hand. That hand, to Dante’s great fortune, still held Stearns’s gun.
He grabbed the barrel and whacked the arm against the floor until the hand fell away from the grip. As a precaution, he avoided touching anything that had once been part of Stearns. When the arm began to flop on the floor, he commended himself for his decision.
He slowly backed away from the arm. Looking at the remaining two ASAP guards, neither of whom was pointing a weapon at him though they watched him with clear suspicion, he said, “I agree. Let’s move.”
“We heard gunfire, and…” a man in his fifties or early sixties said before trailing off as he took in the remains of Stearns. Given the lab coat the man was wearing, Dante figured him for one of the douchebag scientists he blamed for their current predicament. He eased his finger off the trigger.
The Indian woman he’d seen in the clean room bumped into the man’s back when he stopped in front of her. She looked up, screamed, and dropped the heavy device she’d been carrying – Dante recognized it as another scanner – on the ground with a clang. The man in front of her covered his ears.
“Anju!” Dr. Lab Coat shouted as he turned around and shook the woman, whom Dante found absolutely stunning even in her duress. “Run the scan!”
“No, just run!” Monty shouted. He tried to usher them away, but no one moved. Belgrade stared blankly, still a little shell-shocked, offering no support.
“Is there a point?” Dante muttered. He wondered if he could trust the newcomers. Perhaps that was the point. The newcomers were suspicious of him.
“Close your eyes or look awa
y.” The woman, Anju, came to her senses, knelt beside the scanner as if she’d never lost them, and hit some buttons on a keyboard at the machine’s base while Dante and the two ASAP guards moved cautiously toward them with weapons drawn.
“Initiating scan for biological contamination,” the machine said as if it hadn’t the least bit interest in doing so.
“Are you infected?” Belgrade asked as he, Monty, and Dante fanned out around the two newcomers.
Dante confirmed the point of the scan then. It wasn’t for what was behind them. It was for them. The Russian reloaded his assault rifle and aimed as he took one step, then another, drawing a little closer with each.
“No,” the older gentleman said, raising his hands as Anju stayed on her knees beside the machine. “Of course not. Are you?”
A flash brightened the hall, and Dante was momentarily blinded. He blinked his eyes clear.
“Scan completed,” the scanner said. “Unknown organism detected.” It made a series of beeps, chirps, and whirrs. “Unknown organism detected, stationary, approximately nineteen meters south-southwest. Elevation: five meters above scanner location.”
“Stearns.” Dante glanced back over his shoulder.
“And whatever ate him,” Monty added. “Stay away from the vents.”
“Unknown organism detected, seventy-four meters south-southwest…unknown organism approaching, now seventy meters south-southwest…sixty-seven meters south-southwest…sixty-two meters south-southwest. Estimated time of encounter: less than forty seconds.”
“Well, it’s not us your gadget detects,” Dante said. “And it’s not you either. By the sound of it, we need to leave, right now. Something’s coming, and I don’t want to be here when it arrives.”
“Unknown organism detected, forty-four meters south-southwest…”
“I second that,” Belgrade said.
“Anju,” Dr. Lab Coat said, “grab the scanner.”
“Leave it,” Monty said. “It’ll only slow you down, and you don’t want to be slowed down. Trust me on this.”
“…thirty-six meters south-southwest…”
“Nonsense,” the scientist said. “We may need it.”
“Your call,” Monty said. “I’m out of here.” He started off down the hall.
Belgrade followed. So did Anju.
“Anju?” The older scientist reached out a hand.
“Respectfully, Dr. Werniewski,” the Indian woman said, jerking back to face him and glaring, “if you want it so badly, you carry it.”
“…thirty meters south-southwest…”
Dante shrugged at the doctor and jogged past him. Anju joined him. He didn’t look back to see if Dr. Werniewski was following and didn’t have to. The clap-tap of his fancy dress shoes against the floor gave away his presence just fine.
“Twenty-five meters south-southwest,” the machine said behind them, left all on its own to experience the encounter it was forewarning.
The party jogged briskly but without a spoken destination, the goal merely to be anywhere but out in those halls with god knew what chasing them. Dante chanced a look back. Whatever was drawing near had yet to show itself, but a headless Stearns dropped from the ceiling and hit the ground with a bone-snapping crack. The remains arched backward until neck stump and feet formed a tripod on which the creature pursued them.
The sound drew the others attention. Anju gulped through a hand over her mouth. Dr. Werniewski’s skin blanched. The others stood gaping in revolted awe.
“We need to run,” Dante said, snapping them out of their stupors. He grabbed Anju by the arm and dragged her along with him as he ran. After running the length of the hall and turning a corner, and hearing the others at his heels, he shouted, “Any ideas?”
“The control room!” Monty yelled through heaving breaths. “We’ll be able to see the whole base and be able to tell how badly the infection has spread. Maybe seal it off or at least slow it down.”
“Fourteen meters south-southwest,” the machine said, a soft voice in the distance, mostly drowned out by the alarms.
Dante didn’t look back again. He didn’t want to know how close that Stearns-thing was. It was enough to know that it was coming. “Lead the way,” was all he said.
Monty did, taking off in a full sprint. The others followed, all of them running as fast as they could.
Chapter Eighteen
Screams came from every direction. As Sebastian pushed her past the front entrance, Clara saw a mob scrambling and fighting, its participants piling upon the backs of the fallen and broken. The security booth was empty, the metal detectors knocked over. Heavy shutters blocked the doors out. Humans were hurting humans, hurting themselves, as they tried to break through the unbreakable. They’d given up on society, looking out only for self, as she’d done for so very long.
Clara almost cried, but the moment passed. Well, there’s no escape that way. Their time was short. The infected were closing in.
No escape any way.
Molli was loose, and based on the sounds of panic and chaos echoing down every hall, the battle had been lost as soon as it had begun. Instead of saving lives, the security measures had damned many uninfected humans who might have found safety, might have escaped death, had it not been for the research center’s contamination protocols.
No one in. No one out.
However, Clara knew that once Molli had finished her meal inside her new petri dish, she would find a way out.
I caused this. Her eyes blurred with tears. Everyone dead…or worse, because of me.
She buried her chin against her bosom, wallowing in shame, despair, hopelessness, allowing herself to be pushed by a man she didn’t know, wherever he chose to take her. It didn’t matter. There was no way out.
The big, dumb ox doesn’t think so. She cast a glance at Alfie, a brawny mammoth who probably thought his strength would protect him. He’s a fool, she thought, sickened by his set-back shoulders and head held high. So full of confidence. So full of hope.
Dumb, naïve hope.
Jordan hung at Alfie’s heels like a loyal Labrador. He peppered the brawny man with questions, causing more noise than their group needed to be making. “Where are we going? What are we doing? How can we stop them? How do we get away?” Clara couldn’t make out the answers over the barking alarms and the pulsing of blood beating in her skull.
For his part, Sebastian remained quiet. Clara assumed he was conserving his energy for a fight for survival she had no doubt would come. Her mind darkened with shame even as her heart filled for the man who had slowed his own escape in a futile effort to help with hers, a woman he’d never met and, at most, had seen only in passing.
Every now and then, a droplet of his sweat would hit her cheek or neck. The contact, his selfless exertion, renewed her faith in humanity, even if only a little.
“Guys,” Sebastian said, “I need a second to catch my breath.”
Alfie stopped and turned around. “You okay?” He frowned and took a step toward Clara. “Here, let me take over.”
Jordan grabbed him by the elbow. “Alfie—”
“The name is Alfonse,” their fearless leader said matter-of-factly. He pointed back at Sebastian. “Only he gets to call me Alfie.”
“Okay, then. Alfonse,” Jordan said. “Tell me again how this plan is supposed to work? How are you supposedly going to get us past the goddamn dome that now covers us? Goddamn it! I feel like I’m in a goddamn Stephen King novel.”
“As I told you,” Alfonse said, “Sebastian and I are astrobiologists.”
Clara stiffened. Hadn’t Sergei Kobozev been an astrobiologist? The thought scared her even if it was crazy to think that insanity promulgated within certain professions. Dictators, maybe.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Jordan asked. “You’re not going to turn psychopath on u
s like that other guy, are you?”
Clara raised an eyebrow. She had thought it a fair question, but when she heard him say it aloud, she realized just how absurd it was. “Calm down, Jordan,” she said softly, trying to keep the peace without being condescending.
“Calm down?” Jordan paced, turning on his foot in an exaggerated about-face every time he’d gone about two meters. “Calm down?” Finally, he stopped pacing. “We’re trapped in a quarantine zone with a truly horrific life-form that’s turning people into Play-Doh, and you want me to calm down? We may very well be the only people not yet infected in this goddamn facility, and who knows? Maybe we’re already infected, and it’s just taking longer for it to affect us. We already know you’re infected.”
“What does he mean by that?” Sebastian asked.
“It’s…” Clara began. She shot Jordan a sharp glance that was meant to wound. “Nothing. Relax, Jordan.” The sharpness in her eyes fell upon her tongue. “Your panicking will get us nowhere.”
Jordan’s chest swelled. He looked as though he was going to explode, but after a moment, he began to deflate. “I’m sorry.” His sincerity glimmered behind his eyes a moment then was gone. “Our lives are at stake here. I’d just like to know that the plan I’m following is a solid one.”
“Do you have a better plan?” Sebastian asked.
“Our cell phones!” Jordan blurted as he fumbled in his pocket.
Clara frowned. “Wasn’t yours confiscated?”
Away from the clean room, she rarely encountered security staff on campus. But when a rule was broken, the excessively macho brutes would swarm in like the Foreign Legion. She’d only seen that twice, but those times taught her not to violate so much as a quiet-time policy. The first had been a grad student who’d tried to e-mail his professor’s research notes outside the facility. The second had been an office worker who’d kicked a vending machine when his candy bar got snagged on a lower shelf. Clara had not seen either delinquent again.
After those instances, no new policies were instituted with respect to the vending machines, but sending e-mails to anyone not located within the facility was prohibited and, Clara assumed, blocked entirely. She wasn’t brave enough to try it and find out. Soon after that, their cell phones had been taken away. Outgoing calls were prohibited unless they were chaperoned by men with very large guns. Internet use was permitted, but only as it related to scientific research, and Clara guessed it was highly monitored.
