Stephen smiled at Daniel and said, “You’re welcome.”
Daniel was still trying to figure out what he meant by that when Stephen turned, walked back over to the guards, and unlocked Joe, who looked dazed. Joe stood up, and fell over, and then stood up again. Stephen supported him, like a friend, holding him up. He ripped off part of Joe’s sleeve and handed it back to him.
“You might want to wipe that off,” he said, gesturing to the blood smeared all over Joe’s face.
“Hmm?” He held the cloth in his hands, confused.
“Wipe your mouth, kid.” Stephen said, not unkindly.
Joe responded without thinking, taking the cloth to his face and wiping. When he pulled the rag away and saw the blood, his eyes widened in terror. He turned around, starting to comprehend and, seeing the dead guard he started yelling.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t. I couldn’t do that.”
He made as if to check on the dead guard, as if to help him. Stephen turned Joe to face him and said, “It’s all right, kid. You’re on the right side now.”
Joe didn’t look convinced. He turned towards his old pals, as if gauging whether he could go back to them. Clearly, he couldn’t. So he turned, again, to Stephen, who led him over to Jerome.
“New recruit.” Stephen said, winking at Daniel.
Daniel watched as Stephen sat down next to Joe and Jerome and started - from the way it looked to Daniel - buttering them both up. After a few minutes, Stephen turned to Daniel, as if he knew he was being watched. Stephen smiled at him, all innocence.
Daniel smiled back. He knew Stephen was playing a game, though he didn’t know what Stephen’s rules were. No matter the game. No matter the rules. The trick, Daniel knew, was to make sure he was the one with the winning hand.
Chapter 18
Held at gunpoint, it becomes hard to find the right words, to build a defense. Cate’s mind went blank. She came out with the only thing she could think to say. “What?”
Marisol was unimpressed. “You can see and hear things I can’t. And no human moves like you just did, fighting that vee. Your neck should be broken.”
“Marisol.” It was a long shot, but she didn’t have a better defense. “I was saving your life.”
It looked like a smirk, so Cate wasn’t sure if Marisol meant it to be reassuring or demeaning.
“Thank you for not letting that vee eat me. And you’re welcome for my shooting him for you. Now we’re even.” Just a touch of sarcasm. “You want to answer some questions for me, or should I just walk you down to the prison right now?”
Cate had lived so long as though she were human, spent so many years working at her top secret job with high security clearance, she’d grown accustomed to being safe. The first year had been the hardest. After she’d faked her way in, she lived in constant fear of discovery. When she’d eventually realized how easy it was to go undetected, she’d let her guard down, and now she was caught.
Cate said, “Marisol, I…I think we have more important things to worry about right now.”
Marisol looked around, taking in the dead vee next to Cate, as if wondering if there were any other vees in the room. Then she retrained her eyes on Cate.
“If you were the old Cate, the human Cate, I would agree. But you being a vee, there being vees on the loose because someone on the inside let them out, makes me think this is the most important thing right now.”
Cate pleaded, “You have to know I had nothing to do with that. I would never…”
Marisol snapped, “What? Never help your fellow vees? How could I trust anything you say to me? You are one of them!”
Cate cried out, “Vees killed my whole family.”
After Mark, and Mom and Dad had been killed, Cate had gone to stay at their neighbor, Sarah’s house. The NVIA was a relatively new agency at the time. There weren’t a lot of field offices, so an agent had teamed with a local detective on her case. They’d asked her a bunch of questions about the murders, and she’d told them what she could about the vee. She described him to them. They made a composite picture of him, that looked eerily like him. Ultimately, though, they didn’t know who he was or have a record of him. They told her they were working on catching him but they hadn’t left her with much hope.
“You are a vee.” Marisol’s words hurt, even though they were true.
“I didn’t choose this.” Cate insisted. “It was forced on me.”
It was a few days after the murders when Cate returned to what had been her family home. She wouldn’t have gone back so soon, but she needed clothes for the funeral, and money. Until the will was worked out and insurance dealt with, she was living on her last work study paycheck. Dad had always kept a few hundred dollars in his sock drawer, so Cate planned to grab that, along with a black dress.
It hadn’t occurred to her that the vee would be there. It was daytime, and lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same spot. He’d “enjoyed watching her,” he said. He enjoyed watching her watch him kill her brother. She thought he hadn’t noticed, but he had. “He knew what she needed,” he said.
He bit her, and she was glad, happy she would be with her family. She wanted to die. Then he did something more horrible than killing her. He offered her his blood. Despite wanting to die, she drank it. She drank because she didn’t have the courage to die. She drank because she knew it was her only chance to live. She would never think of that moment without being overwhelmed with guilt for having chosen to live. In that moment, when she was done drinking and realized that she would live, she felt like the most horrid person in the world, like there was nothing more horrible she could do than what she had just done. She turned out to be wrong.
“Marisol, I would rather die than kill a human.” Again, she thought to herself. I will never kill a human, again.
The vee left her alone in her house. She didn’t know exactly how long she’d lain there. It was getting dark by the time she dragged herself up. The world was changed. She was confused, dizzy, hungry. She needed to get to safety. She walked to Sarah’s house. She only wanted comfort. She only wanted a friend. She hadn’t meant to hurt her. She hadn’t meant to kill.
Marisol was still listening to her, which was good, even if she didn’t seem to understand how deeply Cate meant what she said.
“I would rather die than live as a vee.” If only she had. She wished almost every day that she’d died along with her family. Sarah’s death, of course, had been blamed on the same vee that had killed Cate’s family. It was an easy lie to tell, and easy to believe the poor grieving girl who had seen so much death.
Cate continued, “That’s why I came to work here. I’m not trying to help them. I want them all dead, and I’m willing to die along with them.”
It wasn’t a truth she normally let herself think about. Of course, that’s what would happen if the vaccine succeeded. She would starve along with the rest of them.
Marisol stared hard, as if trying to decide whether or not to believe Cate. It seemed like long hours went by with neither of them moving, before Marisol broke the silence.
“How did you do it? How did you pass the blood tests?” Marisol asked.
Cate explained, “I only had to pass the one.”
Marisol’s face registered understanding. “You process the blood tests in your lab.”
“Yeah, periodic testing hasn’t really been a problem for me.”
Marisol pushed, “But the first one? How did you do that? Did Stan help you?”
Cate answered, “Stan? No. I didn’t even know him yet. I inserted a bag of human blood under my skin. I really didn’t know if it would work. I guess it did.”
“Well, we’ll be changing the way those tests are run in the future.” Marisol seemed to run out of steam as she sank into a nearby chair.
Cate was stuck. If she pushed Marisol too hard right now, she could end up dead. Like Cate herself, Marisol had probably not worked in the field as an agent, but it was obvious
she still remembered how to fire her gun. All agents, even researchers like herself, had to learn how to handle a weapon. Working for the NVIA in any respect was dangerous. Living in this world of monsters – of human or vee variety - was dangerous too. Still, a trained human with a gun trumped a reluctant, unarmed vee in the weapons department. Cate would have no chance if she tried to run. And she wouldn’t attack. It felt like there was no good course of action. Whatever they did was up to Marisol to decide.
“What now?” Cate asked.
“Hell if I know. Any other day you’d be in the jail already, or I’d have shot you. Lucky for you we have a few other issues that I’d rather not deal with alone.”
Marisol looked around for a moment, as if gesturing at the danger in some vague way, while also trying to spot an attack. Cate tried to convince herself that Marisol hadn’t meant everything she’d said or, at least, not the part about shooting her. Either way, standing around wasn’t going to improve anybody’s situation.
“I don’t think we should stay here.” Cate suggested. This long hall of cubicles felt too open for safety.
“Since we can’t get out of the building, and since there doesn’t seem to be a good option, I’d say we should go back to the lab.” Marisol paused, as if trying to work out a difficult math problem in her head. She continued. “Maybe you can help figure out what happened to those prisoners, or at the very least, I can have a long talk with Stan, if he’s even there.”
Cate asked, “Should we try a new set of stairs or go back to the one we were in before?”
Marisol waved towards the far stairs, the untested stairwell. She kept the gun trained on Cate.
“If there are vees out there, you can sniff them out before me.” Marisol commanded. “I’m not putting this away. I don’t trust you, and I’m holding this for whoever else we run into.”
“Fair enough.” Cate started to walk towards the stairs, aware of Marisol following, eyes, if not gun, trained on her.
They would have to be quiet once in the stairwell, and wouldn’t be able to talk. There was something Marisol had said that was still bothering her. Cate stopped and turned back to Marisol.
“What?” Marisol’s breath caught. “Did you hear something?”
“No. Sorry. No. I just had a question.” Cate explained. “Why Stan? You brought him up a few times.”
“You really don’t know? About the pigs?” Marisol asked.
“You mentioned them earlier too. And no, I have no idea.”
Marisol answered, “He’s another problem I’ll have to deal with when this is over. He lied about the pigs. I didn’t know who in your department knew. I assumed he had help from one or more of you.”
“What do you mean?” Cate felt like she had a right to defend herself. Her work was always impeccable. “I was there. The vee died when he had the pig’s blood.”
Marisol shook her head. “No, Stan didn’t lie about the vee. He lied about the pigs. About what happened after your test.”
“I don’t understand. We euthanized the pigs. They were sent to be incinerated.”
Marisol practically snorted. “And as Stan found out, and I found out later, that didn’t go so well.”
“The incineration?” What could have possibly gone wrong at the incinerators? “Did the pigs explode or something?” Cate asked.
For a moment Cate thought it seemed as if Marisol was savoring the suspense, like an actor about to deliver the line of her life. And in truth, nothing Marisol could have said would have surprised Cate more.
“No, they attacked. The dead pigs got up and attacked the technicians.”
Chapter 19
As they moved down the hall, the noises they’d been hearing disappeared. There was no more gunfire, no more crashing. Mason couldn’t guess if that was a good thing or bad. He just knew the quiet made it harder to find whoever had been making the noise.
Althea stopped at the next door down. Frank moved past. Mason waited. This was all part of the drill now. One person takes point. One person watches the back. One would be the sweep. He had to hand it to Althea, she was much better than a glorified mall cop.
Althea opened the door. Frank stepped in. Mason waited until Althea was in before he moved to his post at the door.
Mason kept his eyes on the hall, but glanced into the room, periodically, to study everything, check on his team, and look for danger. Mason had always been good at spotting danger.
In the agency, they don’t call you a rookie when you’re new to the field, but they treat you that way. It’s not that you automatically get assigned all the crappy, dead end leads. It’s completely random. “Beginner’s luck,” it was ironically called. Yet everyone knows it will be months or even years before your luck will turn around.
Frank was Mason’s first partner. He’d graduated the academy the year before Mason. Everybody liked Frank, but in the year he’d been out in the field, Frank had done nothing beyond transport duty and paperwork. When Mason started, he was raring to go, but they continued to suffer from “beginner’s luck.”
They managed not to resent each other as crap assignment upon crap assignment landed on their desks, mostly due to Frank’s ability to make every job sound like the one they really wanted. These were the calls they were only following up on because they were rookies, even if they weren’t called that. But Frank got excited about each one, like this one was gonna be their big break.
A few months into their partnership, Frank and Mason ended up checking out a warehouse. A neighbor in a nearby apartment building had reported suspicious characters working at night. Anyone who worked at night was, of course, suspicious, but some jobs required overnight labor. Try as they might to explain that to helpful citizens, calls about suspicious nighttime workers flooded in.
They went to the warehouse after dark. As much as most people thought there were rampant gangs of vees trolling the streets and feeding off everything that moved as soon as the sun went down, the truth was the vee population was still so much smaller than the human population that being out at night was not immediately dangerous, especially when you and your partner were armed with guns. Of course, vees had better night vision and adding cover of darkness made every mission a little less safe.
When they entered the building, Mason could tell something was odd. He’d checked out a lot of suspicious activity at night, and usually it was just humans working, but humans didn’t work in the dark. From the sound of it, there was definite activity going on.
The problem with sneaking up on vees was that you can’t. As soon as Mason realized there was activity, it got deadly silent. And then they were being attacked. There were six vees coming at them full speed. They weren’t trying to dodge. They knew their prey’s weakness in the dark.
Mason and Frank opened fire, spraying the vees with agency issued explosive bullets. Vees healed too quickly for a standard bullet to do enough harm to subdue them. Exploding bullets did more damage more quickly and your aim didn’t have to be quite so dead on.
Two vees went down before they reached them. Two more tackled Frank as Mason took aim at the two headed for him. The first one didn’t get a chance to touch him. The second landed on top of him, knocking him down, just before Mason blew a chunk out of his heart.
With the immediate threat to himself taken care of, Mason targeted the first vee he saw on Frank. When his head exploded, the second vee leapt towards Mason, who was already training his gun on him. He brought him down with a shot to the chest, missing his heart. The vee would live to be interrogated. More importantly, Frank would live.
By the end of that night, two vees were arrested, four more were buried, and Mason had saved his partner’s life. Frank had been bitten, but not turned. Mason went from rookie status to being the guy you wanted on a hunt. Over the last three and a half years, that reputation had been earned many more times.
So when he looked back into the room, where Frank and Althea were digging around, and something caught his eye,
Mason didn’t hesitate.
“Down.” Yelling a command worked faster than yelling something vague.
As Frank and Althea dropped down, the thing that Mason had sensed came out of the corner. He ran full speed at Frank, reaching him in seconds. Mason took aim and fired, hitting him in the shoulder, knocking him back.
The prisoner - that’s what he was, one of the infected prisoners - didn’t fall back or slow down. He didn’t stop coming. He reached Frank and took a bite out of the closest thing he could get to, Frank’s ear.
Frank shot him, point blank in the chest, and the prisoner staggered back a few steps from Frank. He looked around, taking in all his options, and charged at Althea. Althea and Mason fired continuously, bullets hitting him repeatedly in the chest, but the prisoner kept coming.
And then his face exploded. Mason had seen what an explosive bullet could do to a man’s head, so wasn’t surprised by the visual. The prisoner crumpled to the floor.
Frank stood up. “So, aim for the head from now on, huh?”
His face was streaked with blood. Mason asked, “You okay?”
Frank touched his ear and winced. “Eh, I’ll live. Just a nibble, really.”
Mason looked around the room, which seemed to be storage for blood and samples. There were freezers all up and down the walls, most with glass doors. Some held big bags of blood and some held beakers. The prisoner, when Mason had first spotted him, had been digging in a unit at the end of the room. Mason could see the empty blood bags on the floor. He’d apparently been feeding.
He looked down at the body of the prisoner. With his face pretty much shattered, Mason couldn’t tell if this was the prisoner he’d seen in the hall or not. They all had the same dress code and he hadn’t had time to notice any distinguishing characteristics. This could be any one of them.
Caged (The V to Z Trilogy Book 1) Page 10
