Twenty-Five Percent (Book 2): Downfall

by Nerys Wheatley

  A sick feeling was settling in the pit of Alex’s stomach as he pushed the final drawer closed. Micah voiced his own fears.

  “Are they using people as guinea pigs here?”

  Alex looked out the window at the main building looming across the courtyard. What had they got themselves into?

  18

  Alex’s arm shot out, pushing Micah back against the wall.

  Another freakishly tall and well built man strolled out of the door they’d been aiming for into the main building, lighting up a cigarette as he went and showing no sign of having seen them.

  Breathing out, Alex lowered his arm. Micah grimaced and shot him a glare, rubbing his back where Alex had slammed him into the steelwork.

  “Sorry,” Alex mouthed.

  The Omnav employee sat on one of the wood and metal benches in the courtyard, his back to them as he puffed smoke into the air. With his jacket pushed back, Alex could see the edge of a holstered pistol at his waist.

  An example of modern topiary, all straight lines and edges, no leafy peacocks here, hid them from the guard, but Alex didn’t want to take any chances. Turning back to Micah, he pointed towards the corner of the main building and they crept away.

  “Maybe we should look for another way in,” Micah whispered when they were safely out of sight.

  Alex nodded and they made their way to the side of the building. They kept a careful watch for any more security guards, but there were none. The guard who was currently coating his lungs with nicotine was the only person they’d seen, other than Chester and Brian, in the hour since they’d got inside the compound. Something was definitely not right.

  Reaching the corner, Micah peered through the branches of a shrub.

  “Anything?” Alex said.

  “No people. Looks like there’s a loading bay though.”

  “Cameras?”

  Micah stepped in closer to the shrub, almost disappearing as he rustled through the branches. “I see one facing away from us, covering the bay. Can’t see any others.”

  Alex looked around, checking they were still alone. “Think we could take the camera out and get into the loading doors?”

  “You could probably reach the camera. It’s maybe fifteen feet up. I can’t see if the doors are open though.”

  “Okay, let’s try it then.”

  With one last look round, they stepped around the shrub and out into the open.

  This side of the wing facing the car park was more utilitarian than the front. While the architecture was still steel and glass on the top two floors, at ground level the entire wall was a solid windowless grey looking out onto concrete. No landscaping or minimalist topiary here. And almost no cover. A lorry was parked by the loading bay, but that was all.

  They jogged towards the lorry, keeping a watch for any people. Not that it mattered. If someone came, they had nowhere to hide.

  “Oh, no,” Micah said suddenly.

  Alex slowed and looked back at him. Micah was looking up back the way they had come. Alex followed his line of sight to a CCTV camera set on the wall high above the shrub at the corner.

  It was pointing directly at them.

  “I didn’t see it,” Micah protested. “It was right above me.”

  “We’ll discuss your lack of observational skills later,” Alex said, speeding up.

  No longer bothering about stealth, they ran to the loading bay and into the recess where huge double doors were harboured. It didn’t matter now they’d definitely been seen by the first camera.

  “Maybe we should just leave,” Micah said as Alex searched for a way in. “Now they know we’re here, what can we do?”

  Alex shook his head. “You can leave if you want, but Hannah’s in there and I’m not going without her. Even if I have to shoot my way in and fight through a hundred eaters.”

  There was a smaller door to the left of the main loading doors and Alex grasped the handle. Locked. He placed one foot against the wall next to the door and pulled. The handle snapped off in his hand. Suddenly off balance, he staggered backwards a couple of steps before landing on his backside on the ground.

  He bit back a scream of frustration.

  Micah stepped up to the door and smashed the butt of his pistol into the small window set into the top half. It bounced off the toughened security glass.

  “Damn it!”

  “We need something bigger,” Alex said, climbing to his feet and looking around.

  “How about that?” Micah ran to a two wheeled trolley on the far side of the bay and pulled it back to the door.

  Alex picked it up. “Stand back.”

  Turning his head away to protect his face from broken glass, he jammed the end of the trolley into the window. The impact turned the glass into a mosaic of tiny squares within its protective coating. Another heavy blow from the trolley and the ruined sheet of glass dislodged from the frame, dangling by a corner against the door. Micah used his pistol to nudge the glass aside, letting it drop to the ground, and wiped away the few remaining pieces of glass from the window frame.

  He looked inside. “There’s no way to unlock it from in here.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Micah stepped back and Alex took his place at the door. Taking hold of the window frame, he gripped the steel door and pulled. It didn’t budge. He pulled again, putting all his considerable strength into it, along with a strained groan. Still nothing.

  “Maybe it’s made of Kryptonite,” Micah said.

  “Do you want to do this?” He tried a third time.

  “Sorry,” Micah said, “what is it you’re trying to do?”

  Alex stepped back. “It’s an extremely strong door.”

  Micah studied the hole where the window used to be. “I think I can fit through here.”

  “Are you saying I couldn’t?”

  Micah looked him up and down. “Well, you know, middle age spread is a very real thing...”

  “Just get in there before the big guards with the big guns come.”

  Smirking, Micah shrugged off his black leather jacket and handed it to Alex. Alex considered dropping it on the ground, but decided that would be childish. It was also a really nice jacket.

  Starting with his arms, Micah threaded himself through the opening which was barely a foot square. He squirmed his shoulders through, then pushed off the ground and wriggled until he was halfway in. Then he came to a stop.

  “Little help here,” he said in a strained voice.

  Alex grasped his ankles and pushed. Micah shot through the window. There was a thud and a grunt on the other side of the door followed by Micah’s indignant voice.

  “Next time, a bit more gently please.”

  “Are you injured?”

  “No.”

  “Then stop complaining. Can you open the door?”

  There were a few seconds of silence. “No. It needs a keycard.” Micah’s face appeared at the window. “Give me your jacket. I’ll pull when you get stuck.”

  “If I get stuck.” He handed Micah’s jacket in to him and started to shrug off his own.

  The sound of footsteps stopped him.

  “Someone’s coming,” he whispered.

  He crept to the outer edge of the recessed bay and looked out. Another black suited security guard was approaching across the concrete from the direction of the front of the building. There was no way for Alex to get away unseen. He was trapped.

  “Come on!” Micah hissed.

  Alex returned to the door. “I’ll never get through there in time.”

  Micah looked toward where the guard would enter the bay. “I can see better from here. Go and stand at the corner and watch me and I’ll give you a countdown so you can get him before he sees you.”

  It was a better plan than anything Alex could think of. He returned to the far edge of the bay and waited, his eyes on Micah at the window. Hearing the sound of the guard’s footsteps getting closer, he tensed, closing his right hand into a fist.


  After a few seconds Micah lifted his hand and lowered his fingers one by one.

  Five...

  four...

  three...

  two...

  one...

  Alex whirled round, aiming his fist at head height with enough power to knock the man out as the guard rounded the corner.

  At least, on a normal man it would have been head height. What Alex wasn’t counting on was the guard being a direct descendant of Goliath.

  Alex’s fist glanced off the man’s jaw and drove into his neck. He staggered back against the corner, choking and clutching at his throat.

  “What did you do?!” Micah yelled.

  Alex watched the man frantically trying to breathe. “I was aiming for his head! I wasn’t expecting him to be seven feet tall.” He stepped forward, not knowing what to do. What if he’d crushed his windpipe or broken his neck? What if the man died? “I’m sorry! Can you breathe? Please breathe!”

  Sagging against the wall and holding his throat while unsuccessfully attempting to drag air into his lungs, the man looked up at Alex, panic in his eyes.

  “Oh hell, Micah, what do I do?” He turned to look at Micah behind the door.

  “Don’t move.”

  It was then that Alex realised his mistake. Micah focused beyond him for a moment before disappearing from the window. Alex turned around slowly to find the guard standing up straight, the gun in his hand pointed at Alex’s chest.

  “Take out your gun and place it on the ground,” the man rasped. He coughed, but the gun didn’t waver.

  A strange mixture of emotions swept through Alex, a combination of relief that the man wasn’t going to die and disgust that he’d fallen for the ruse.

  He affected a look of terror and raised his hands. “Okay, just don’t shoot me.”

  Maybe it was because of Alex’s acting ability, or a confidence born of being the size of King Kong, but the guard hadn’t stepped out of Alex’s reach. He should have.

  Alex lunged forward, grabbing at the hand holding the gun with his left hand. The bay echoed with the sound of a gunshot, followed a split second later by a metallic ricochet, then the dull thud of a fist hitting a skull.

  The guard dropped to the concrete and lay still. Alex immediately grabbed the pistol that dropped from his hand. He wasn’t making that mistake twice. He also checked for any other weapons, coming away with a nasty looking ten inch long serrated knife from a sheath beneath the man’s jacket and a keycard from his breast pocket.

  “Is it safe?” Micah called.

  Alex looked back at the door to see him reappear at the window. “Thanks for the help.”

  “I knew you were going to do something reckless, and when that happens, bullets tend to head in my direction. I’m lucky this door is strong.” The indentation where the bullet had hit the metal by the window opening was clear to see. “What are you going to do with him?”

  Alex walked back to the door and handed him the card. “Try this.”

  Micah did something to the right of the door then shook his head. “Doesn’t work. There’s a number pad. I think it wants a code.”

  “Because the card working would have been too easy.” Alex eyed the small hole in the door. “Do you think we could get him through the window?”

  Micah looked at the unconscious man-mountain. “I’m going to go with a no on that.”

  “Well, we can’t just leave him here.”

  Returning to the man’s comatose form, Alex took hold of his ankles and dragged him across the bay, laying him in a spot a few feet from the door. “Keep an eye on him. I’m going to check the lorry.”

  Leaving Micah with his gun trained on the guard, Alex jogged to the small lorry parked near the bay entrance. The door was unlocked and a quick search of the cab produced a set of keys from the glove box. Finally, something was going their way.

  The back of the lorry was empty. Now things were going too well.

  “I can leave him in there if we find some way to tie him up,” he said when he got back to Micah.

  “There’s an office back here,” Micah replied. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  The guard groaned as Micah disappeared from the window. Alex kept the gun he’d confiscated from him ready.

  The man’s eyes fluttered open. As soon as he saw Alex, his hand went to his holster. Then it went to his knife sheath. Alex tensed in case it went somewhere he’d missed.

  “Do you even know how to use that?” the guard said. “Because your safety is on.”

  “Nice try, but it doesn’t have a safety independent of the trigger.”

  While the guard didn’t exactly relax, he did stop looking like he was about to leap up and wrestle the gun from Alex’s grip.

  “You military?”

  “Police.”

  “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “Arresting people isn’t really an option anymore, is it? Thanks to your boss.”

  The guard sat up, holding a hand to his jaw. “You have quite a punch.”

  “I take it you’ve never been hit by a Survivor. I was holding back.”

  He lowered his hand. “I suppose I should thank you then. What are you going to do with me?” He scrunched his nose. “And what is that smell?”

  Micah returned at that moment, holding a roll of packing tape. “This is all I could find.”

  “What, no duct tape?”

  “Sadly not. You’d think they’d be better equipped in a place like this.” He pulled out his gun and tossed the roll to Alex. “Please don’t run,” he said to the guard. “I’m a really good shot, so you wouldn’t get far, but I’d rather not waste the bullet.”

  Alex walked up to the man. “In answer to your question, if you don’t do anything stupid, I’m going to tape you up and lock you in the back of that lorry. If you decide to go the stupid route, though, I’m going to knock you out again, then tape you up and lock you in the back of that lorry. Your choice.”

  The guard silently placed his hands behind his back.

  It turned out to be unexpectedly easy. Alex had thought the huge man would at least try to run, if not cause him some painful injuries. He couldn’t help remembering the last time he’d bound someone’s hands. His nose still didn’t feel quite right from when Kerry had head butted him. But the guard was surprisingly docile, which was a relief considering his size.

  “How tall are you, anyway?” Alex said as he wrapped copious amounts of brown tape around his ankles as he sat in the lorry.

  “Six eight,” the guard said. “Boot likes us big.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see, if you’re going in there.” He nodded his head towards the main building.

  Alex held up the keycard he’d taken from him. “Is there any chance you’d tell me the code for this?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing short of a genuine threat to kill me would make me go against Boot. And if you did threaten me I wouldn’t believe you, after how you reacted when you thought I was dying. I’m pretty sure you’re a nice guy, which means you don’t stand a chance. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget whatever reasons you have for being here and leave now, while you still can.”

  “Not an option. But thanks for the warning.”

  The guard shrugged. “It’s your funeral. And it will be.”

  Alex wound tape around his mouth and left the lorry, locking him in and replacing the keys in the glove compartment.

  It took a couple of minutes of uncomfortable wriggling and a bit of pulling from Micah for Alex to get through the window into the building. Once they’d found Hannah and the other doctors, they were either going to have to get a keycard with a code or find another way out. He thought of Doctor David Cranbourne’s somewhat rotund frame. They were definitely going to need a door.

  Inside was a short, wide corridor. Double doors to the right led to a storage area for the supplies coming in through the loading bay.

  Alex wasn’t sure what Omnav actually did
in the building. He hadn’t paid much attention to the details of where they were going, focused more as he was on the abducted doctors and how he and Micah were going to get them out. He knew Omnav Industries had three large manufacturing plants scattered around the country, in London, Birmingham and Glasgow, where they produced the military vehicles, weapons, and construction materials which were their stock in trade. But with the little thought he’d put into it he had assumed the Omnav headquarters was largely administrative. The morgue and crematorium suggested otherwise.

  Ahead of them a door opened onto another corridor which ran for twenty feet to their right before reaching a T-junction. Pausing at the door, they listened for any indication anyone else was around, but heard nothing. When they headed out into the corridors, it was equally as quiet. Alex was starting to think running into the huge guard at the loading bay was just bad luck. The place seemed deserted.

  They were making their way through the ground floor, traversing the maze of corridors, when Micah stopped so suddenly Alex almost walked into him. Alex was about to ask what was wrong when he heard the faint sound of voices coming from around a corner ahead of them. Micah spun round, pushing Alex back the way they’d come. Alex tried a couple of doors on the right side of the corridor while Micah tried them on the left, but everything was locked, the keypads beside them mocking with their resolutely red LEDs.

  Finally, as the voices became so loud Alex knew they had to be moments away from discovery, Micah found an unlocked door. Alex pulled it to behind him as two black-suited guards walked into sight.

  From the cleaning supply cupboard they found themselves in, he and Micah peered through the marginally open door.

  “Frobisher never carries his radio, you know that,” one of the men said.

  “Well, it’s a pain in the arse. He missed relieving me on the front entrance.”

  “We don’t need a guard there anyway. Who’s going to come in?”

  As the two men approached, they seemed to fill the corridor. While not quite as tall as the man Alex had left in the lorry at the loading bay, who he assumed was probably Frobisher, they were close, their immaculate jackets straining across their ridiculously broad shoulders. Did they put steroids in the water in this place? Maybe that was what they were doing here, creating some sort of super race.