Twenty-Five Percent (Book 2): Downfall

by Nerys Wheatley

  “You should check the labs,” one of the guards, a young man with short, dark hair and a beard, said. “I saw Bish checking out that cute young lady doctor Boot brought in.”

  His companion, an older man with a shaved head, smiled. “The one with the glasses and the great arse?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Fury flooded through Alex. His fist clenched so hard his nails bit into his palms. He should have hit Frobisher harder.

  The two men reached the door opposite and baldy removed a keycard from his trouser pocket, swiping it and keying in the code. Sadly, his body was blocking the number pad and they couldn’t see what he was typing. Alex would have loved an excuse to punch both their lights out.

  “I’ll take the ammo to Brian,” Beardy said as they walked into the room. “You can go and see if Frobisher’s done beating off at the lab.”

  Alex stepped away from the door, his vision clouding red, ready to rush the two trolls and pummel them into oblivion. Micah grabbed his arm and shook his head. He pointed at the door.

  Trying to rein in his rage, Alex looked through the gap again. Opposite them, the two men had left the door of the room they’d entered wide open. Inside, Alex could see racks of machine guns. Boxes of ammunition sat on a shelf above.

  Baldy and Beardy reappeared at the door and turned into the corridor, heading back the way they’d come. A mop head in his hand, Micah pulled Alex away from the door and opened it, alternating his gaze between the men walking away and the door still closing opposite. Placing the mop head on the floor, he waited until the door was within a foot of the frame, then slid the mop across the corridor at it. Alex watched the two guards for any sign they’d heard anything, but they were oblivious as they walked and chatted. On the other side of the corridor, the mop head slid into the gap just in time to lodge between the door and the frame, preventing it from closing.

  Alex pulled the door almost closed again as Micah did a fist pump and then punched both arms into the air for good measure. Alex rolled his eyes, although he couldn’t help being secretly impressed.

  They waited until the guards were well out of earshot then crossed the hallway.

  Micah picked up the mop head. “Nice to know all those hours spent with my grandmother at her bowls club after school until my parents came home wasn’t for nothing. And that I’ve still got it.”

  He returned the mop head to the cupboard then came back to the room where Alex was slowly turning in a circle, his jaw hanging open.

  “Wow,” Micah said.

  “Yes,” Alex replied.

  They hadn’t found just a room with a few guns. They’d found an armoury.

  The walls and ceiling were reinforced with steel, as was the door which was three inches thick. Racks of automatic rifles and semi-automatic pistols of every calibre lined the walls. There was even a huge fifty calibre machine gun in one corner. One wall was lined with shelves stacked with boxes. A specially designed rack held at least fifty skull-spikers, but these weren’t over a decade old like the ones Alex and Micah had got from Bates. These were brand new, their handles gleaming matt black in the glow of the overhead fluorescent light. Alex picked one up and depressed the button to activate the blade which shot smoothly from the handle with a barely audible whoosh. He turned it over and over, watching the light play along its featureless length.

  “Look at this,” Micah said from across the room.

  He returned the spiker to its rack and walked to where Micah was staring into an open box on a shelf.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Alex reached in to take out a black plastic wrapped rectangular block.

  Micah stepped back. “Should you be doing that with plastic explosive?”

  Alex tossed the block into the air and caught it again, grinning when Micah looked like he was about to have a heart attack. “C-4 is perfectly stable. You need a blasting cap to make it explode. You can even jump on it.”

  “Please don’t.”

  Alex smiled, returning it to the box.

  “Where do you get this information about C-4 anyway?” Micah said.

  “Where I learn all the useful stuff - Mythbusters.”

  Micah shook his head and looked around. “This place would have Bates in tears. You want to take anything with you?”

  “No, I don’t plan on shooting our way out of here. But just in case we want to come back...” He took the roll of packaging tape he’d used on Frobisher, scrunching up a lump of it and sticking it to the base of the frame to prevent the door from closing properly. “You never know when we might want to blow something up.”

  Micah walked out ahead of him. “Just so you know, if you start messing around with explosives, I want to be very far away.”

  They continued to make their way through the building, checking round every corner and listening ahead of every blind spot. But other than a harassed looking middle aged woman in a navy blue skirt suit who was completely oblivious to their hiding place behind a huge ficus in the employee cafeteria, they saw no-one as they traversed the ground floor. Inside the building was as deserted as outside.

  As they reached the far end of the building, they heard a door open around a corner ahead of them. Voices drifted from somewhere. The door closed again.

  Alex and Micah flattened themselves against the wall. When no-one appeared, they crept to the corner.

  The corridor was blocked by a set of glass double doors with a keypad on the wall beside them. Beyond the doors, the walls were made of glass, revealing the rooms inside. Rooms full of work benches and microscopes and a myriad of other scientific machines and paraphernalia.

  People were working in the laboratories.

  “Hannah,” Alex whispered.

  It had only been five days since her panicked phone call, but they were five days during which he didn’t know if she was alive or dead. They hadn’t known each other for long, but somehow she had become very important to him. Seeing her now, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail and her big, brown eyes focused through her red-framed glasses on the tablet in her hand, sucked all the breath from Alex’s lungs.

  He’d found her, now nothing and no-one could stop him from protecting her and taking her home.

  At that moment, she lifted her head and looked straight at him. Her eyes widened, lips parting in surprise, then she looked behind her at something further into the room out of Alex’s line of sight.

  “I need to get in there,” he said. “Even if I have to smash my way through those doors, I have to get in.”

  He started forward, stopping when Micah grabbed his arm.

  “Not now,” he said, pulling Alex away. “Look.”

  Alex turned back in time to see Baldy walk into view in the lab with Hannah. He said something to her and she looked up at him, annoyance on her face. Whatever she said back, he didn’t like it because he turned away, frowning.

  She said something else, putting the tablet down and walking to the door leading into the corridor. The guard followed.

  Micah pulled Alex back out of sight around the corner.

  “So, what? You’re coming with me to the toilet now?” It was Hannah’s voice, loud and angry.

  “I’m supposed to watch you...”

  “Not in the toilet you’re not. Where am I going to go?”

  “But Mr. Boot...”

  “...would not be happy to hear you were interfering with my work in any way. Maybe I should tell him that I can’t concentrate when I’m busting for a wee because I refuse to go to the toilet with you there. Is that what you want me to do? Because I will.”

  There was a pause. “Fine. Just don’t go anywhere else.”

  The faint sound of footsteps was followed by a door opening.

  Micah grabbed Alex’s arm and pointed to a door behind them with the ladies’ toilets symbol on the door in the form of a minimalist line drawing of a generic skirted woman. They ran for the door and darted in, waiting in the white tiled space.

  Ten seconds la
ter, the door opened and Hannah walked in. Seeing Alex, her face lit up in a huge smile and she ran towards him. He stepped forward and opened his arms to hug her, but she stopped short, wrinkling her nose.

  “You smell terrible.”

  He was so happy to see her that all he could do was laugh, even if it was costing him a hug.

  “It’s sheep. Long story.” He let out a long breath. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you. Are you alright? Have they hurt you?” If the answer was yes, not even Micah would be able to stop him from going on the warpath.

  “No, we’re all okay, apart from the whole being kept prisoner thing, which isn’t fun.” She looked at Micah and smiled. “Hello, Micah. How are you feeling? Do you have any ill effects from the cure? Larry is dying to do more tests.”

  “No, none whatsoever. Thanks to you, Dave, Pauline and Larry, I’m fine. Oh, and I’m immune now.”

  She smiled. “We thought that might happen, but we weren’t certain. Larry will be thrilled. He was dying to know if you are. He was talking about testing it out by injecting you with eater blood. I’m almost sure he was joking though.” She looked back up at Alex. She was so close he could have reached out and touched her without taking a step. “How did you find us?”

  He shook himself from his touching related fantasies. “Sorry, what?”

  “How did you know we were here?”

  “I got your message.” It was getting very difficult to concentrate on the task at hand, that was, rescuing everyone and escaping. More than anything, Alex wanted to kiss her.

  “What message?”

  His gaze dropped to her lips. They were such an enticing natural shade of dark pink. “On your phone, that you left on Jim’s body.”

  Hannah frowned. “I didn’t leave my phone on Jim’s body.”

  Her mouth looked so incredibly soft and warm and... wait, what? His eyes snapped back to her eyes. “What do you mean, you didn’t leave your phone on Jim’s body?”

  “They took our phones from us. I couldn’t have left it anywhere near him.”

  “But...”

  The door banged open. Micah’s hand flew to his gun.

  “I left her phone on Jim’s body, along with the message on it for you to come looking for her.”

  Alex whirled around at the sound of the man’s voice. Frobisher and Beardy walked into the room and fanned out to either side of the doorway, as much as they could in the small space. They were both carrying semi-automatic pistols, aiming them almost lazily at him and Micah, although Alex had no doubt that if either of them made a move they would shoot first and ask questions never. Frobisher gave Alex a sneer.

  Outside the door were another two black suited behemoths, and between those two behemoths was a gap. Alex’s eyes dropped. At the bottom of the gap, a man appeared in the doorway. A very short man, not much above four feet tall. He was wearing an expensive looking dark blue suit and a derisive smirk.

  “Well, obviously I didn’t do it myself,” the short man said, “I wasn’t there. But I gave the order. And in case you’re wondering, we’ve known you were here since you arrived. It was really quite entertaining watching the two of you going to all that trouble to get in. The sheep were especially fun. But if you’d knocked, you could have just walked in.” He glanced up briefly at the man to his left and then leaned forward towards Alex as if he was imparting some great secret . “Frobisher wants to kill you for knocking him on his arse, but don’t worry, he’s completely loyal to me. So as long as you do as you’re told, I won’t let him.”

  Alex moved in front of Hannah while mentally calculating if he could take out all four gorillas at once. “And who are you exactly?”

  He knew who the man was, both from Lieutenant Dent’s description and because he exuded the kind of planet-sized ego necessary for causing the death of thousands. But Alex felt an acute need to annoy him in any way he could and he got the feeling being ignorant of his existence was exactly the way to do that.

  A flash of anger crossed the short man’s face. “Harvey Boot, Omnav owner and CEO.” The anger was replaced by an expression of pure pride. He spread his arms in an all-encompassing gesture. “This is all mine, if you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence.” His broad Yorkshire accent took the edge off his pomposity, but it was still annoying.

  Alex felt a kernel of rage ignite in his chest. “So you’re responsible for everything that’s going on, the outbreak, the weaponisation of Meir’s, the suffering and death of millions?”

  Boot grinned. “That would be me. Admittedly, I didn’t intend for the outbreak to happen, but we can’t avoid a little collateral damage. And it’s quite a good field test.”

  The kernel of rage experienced a growth spurt into fury so acute Alex was having difficulty not launching himself at Boot and pummelling him into the tiled floor. He couldn’t believe anyone could be so callous. The man was actually boasting about slaughtering countless men, women and children.

  He ground his teeth, muttering under his breath, “What a dick.”

  Boot frowned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

  “I said you’re a dick,” he said, raising his voice. “I also get now why you’re doing all this. Overcompensating just a bit, don’t you think?” He looked down and up Boot’s short form. It was a low blow, but he was unbelievably angry.

  Boot nodded at Frobisher who stepped forward, drew his hand back, and slammed the butt of his gun into Alex’s cheek, whipping his head around.

  Hannah gasped, rushing to his side. “Stop!”

  Tasting copper, Alex ran his tongue over the inside of his cheek where his teeth had cut into the soft flesh and looked back at the huge man. He would have taken him down right there, but the other guard had his pistol aimed directly at Hannah. He got a grip on his self control and bit back an angry retort. It wouldn’t help and he didn’t want to get hit again.

  “Please don’t think of doing anything with that pistol,” Boot said to Micah, whose hand was resting almost casually on the gun still in its holster. “I can assure you my security guards are highly trained and very dedicated to the task of protecting me. At least two of you would be either seriously injured or dead before you’d even got it out. And I really don’t want to lose this opportunity.” A gleeful smile stretched his face. “Can you imagine how thrilled I was when the opportunity fell into my lap to lure here not only a Survivor, but also the first, and so far only, person to be cured of our new strain of the virus?” He spread his hands out in a ridiculously smug gesture. “It’s a sign from the universe.”

  “How did you know we were coming?” Micah said.

  “The security cameras in the Sarcester facility. They’re quite subtly placed. You can’t see them unless you know where to look. We didn’t want the scientist’s work to be tainted by the knowledge they were being watched, but at the same time we couldn’t leave them unsupervised. I have learned it is a sad fact of life that, no matter how generously you reward your employees and how well they are treated, they can sometimes show a shocking level of disloyalty.”

  Alex saw the eyes of Beardy dart to Boot and away again, his Adam’s apple bobbing ever so slightly.

  Oblivious, Boot turned away, speaking as he left. “Escort Ms. Sanderson back to her work, disarm our two guests and take them to the cells. Oh, but get them cleaned up first. I can barely breathe in here.”

  The two guards ungently divested Alex and Micah of their weapons once Boot was gone. Hannah reached out to Alex, but Frobisher stepped between them. She flashed him a look of such intense vitriol that he immediately snatched back the hand with which he had been about to take her arm. Instead, he motioned for her to leave with his gun. The huge guard towered more than a foot above her, and yet she faced him down as if he was a bug.

  Hannah flashed Alex a smile that, in his mind at least, said that once she had got her hands on a scalpel and emasculated the brainless ogre, she was going to find him and kiss him senseless. Then she allowed herself to be esco
rted back to the lab.

  Alex couldn’t help smiling as he listened to her tirade of observations on Frobisher’s lack of mental acuity, his mother’s low standards in choice of conjugal partners, and his questionable lineage, species-wise.

  His chest swelled with pride. She was definitely the woman with whom he wanted to spend his foreseeable future.

  19

  Alex and Micah were escorted to shower off the eau de sheep, given grey sweat pants and t-shirts to wear, then taken to a windowless room not unlike the eater prison in the lab in Sarcester. Except this one was bigger, with more cells.

  The six foot square cells along one wall had been equipped with folding beds and Alex and Micah were placed in two of these, adjoining each other. One of the guards pressed a couple of buttons on a panel on the wall and the doors slid shut, bolts sliding home with a click into the metal lock mechanism moulded to the two inch thick clear polycarbonate cell wall.

  As soon as the latest colossus in a black suit had gone, Alex began to kick repeatedly at the door as hard as he could. After a couple of minutes his leg was aching and the door was as fixed and solid as it had been before he started.

  “Will you give it a rest?” Micah said from his bed. “These cells are designed for eaters.”

  “Yeah, but eaters generally aren’t as motivated as I am. How can you just lie there?”

  Micah closed his eyes. “I’m saving my energy for beating a few steroidal gorillas when we get out of here.”

  Alex gave the door a couple more heavy, but pointless, kicks then dropped onto his bed with a sigh, leaning his elbows on his knees and staring down at the floor. “What are we going to do now?”

  “We’re going to wait patiently until someone lets down their guard, then we’re going to do what we came here to do. They can’t keep us here forever.”

  “No, they can kill us. And I’m not good at waiting patiently.” Alex would have got up and paced, but it wasn’t easy in a six foot square cell.