Broken Prey

by John Sandford

  Couldn’t seem to hear anything except his own words running through his mind: Go, go, go . . .

  He ripped all the wires he could see out of the monitoring rooms, and all the monitoring screens went black; and now he had blood on his hands, literally, where he’d torn skin loose. He felt the pain, but ignored it. There were a number of stereolike consoles on a rack, and he threw the rack to the floor, grabbed more connection wires, ripped them loose.

  Back in the main room, he physically ripped the control panel loose, reached into it, and began pulling all the wires he could see. Some sparked, but most didn’t. What else? He wanted as much chaos as he could get . . .

  Somebody was shouting at him, Leo, Leo, Leo . . .

  He was about to leave when he saw the circuit-breaker panel. He opened it, loosened the two plastic nuts that held on the inner panel, ripped it off, saw the main lines coming through, took the risk: fired three shots into the main lines, the wires sparking, bits of lead and insulation flicking back into his face.

  With the third shot, the power went out, and all the lights that he could see. A few seconds later, emergency lights came up automatically, along with an alarm that sounded like an elevator door was stuck: brenk, brenk, brenk . . .

  Good enough. He left the cage, ran through the open door into the interior of the hospital.

  Behind him, a woman shouted, “Leo, Leo . . .”

  People were coming out of locked rooms, most standing wonderingly in the doorways. He saw two staff members running toward a refuge room, and he continued running himself, past the elevators, into a down-stairway. Down two flights into the security wing.

  The Gods should be out of their cells, waiting.

  Armageddon . . .

  LUCAS SHOUTED TO NORDWALL, “Grant’s at the hospital—he’s killing people. Get the guys, get my guys up there, get them to the hospital. Get everybody you can up there . . .”

  He turned and ran for the truck, jumped in, did a tight circle, and roared toward the street. He was on the north outskirts of town; the hospital was probably seven or eight miles away. Since he’d be slowed going out to the highway and off the highway up the hill to the hospital, just about that many minutes away. Eight minutes: a hundred people could be dead in that time . . .

  Past kids on the sidewalk, nearly T-boning a red Taurus, losing it on a turn, over a sidewalk, onto a lawn, off the lawn back onto the street, down a hill to the highway, right, flooring it, the truck screaming in grief, his cell phone ringing, ringing. He ignored it through the set of curves, shifted into the vacant oncoming lane, and blew past a Harley with a bearded old man on it. He picked up the phone on a straightaway. Sloan: “You know what’s going on?”

  “No, but it’s bad. Cale called, he was freaked. Grant’s inside shooting, there are at least three down, I’m coming up on it, I gotta go . . .”

  “We’re two minutes behind you . . .”

  Off the highway, up the hill, down the approach road, burning past the entry building, fumbling in the seat console for extra .45 clips. There were two of them, and he put them in his jacket pocket. He topped the last rise to the main parking lot, cut past a man on a four-bottom lawnmower, serenely chopping grass, and found a sheriff’s car and an official-looking SUV parked facing the steps to the main entrance, their doors open.

  Lucas jammed the Lexus in beside them and jumped out, ran up the steps, his eyes catching an insignia on the SUV, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. A game warden . . . and then he was through the front doors and down a dark hallway to the cage.

  Cale was there, with a deputy, a game warden, two armed guards, and two orderlies who were opening the outer doors with a manual crank. A half dozen administrative types stood back, clustered, silent. Lucas saw Beloit on her knees in the cage, behind the bars, with another orderly, working over a body—she must have been caught inside. Cale, face white, eyes crazy, shouted, “We’ve heard shooting . . . all we’ve got is emergency power, the fire alarms are going off . . .”

  “You got staffers in there?” Lucas asked.

  “There are a couple dozen of them, we know there are twelve or fourteen in refuge rooms, there are some more, I don’t know how many, locked in patient rooms, we’ve more coming in, they’re calling on cell phones, all we got is cell phones, we got people shot, Davenport, we got people shot . . .”

  The outer door was opening, an inch, two inches. Lucas pulled his .45, popped the clip, checked it, jacked a shell into the chamber, and asked, “Does anybody know where Grant went?”

  One of the administrative types, a woman in a powder blue jacket, said, “He went to the stairs way down on the end. I think he was going down to the security cells. That’s what I think.”

  Lucas said to the deputy and the game warden, “Get all the guys with guns and put them in the stairwells. The elevators won’t be working. I don’t know whether they’re trying to get out or on some kind of suicide run, but we can’t let them run us around. We have to move in on them and finish them in a hurry.” The two men nodded, and the game warden pulled his pistol and checked it. As he did, they heard two muffled explosions and turned that way.

  “Big gun,” the warden said. His voice was cool.

  Lucas said to Cale, “There are more cops coming in, a minute or two behind us. Get them to seal off all the floors, tell them to be careful, that we’re out there.”

  Cale nodded, and then his eyes went wider: “Oh, my God.”

  Lucas tracked his eyes, looked down the hall to the right. Black smoke boiled out of a door and began filling the hallways.

  “Did you call the fire department?” Lucas asked.

  “Yes, yes, they’re coming.”

  “Get some of your office people, go in behind the guys with guns, take fire extinguishers, but be careful. Make sure they stay behind the guns.”

  Game warden: “I think we can get through.”

  Lucas said, “Block the stairs, guys. Remember, more people coming. Tell them we’re out there.”

  He squeezed through the slowly opening cell door and heard three muffled booms. Beloit was crawling out of the cage, hair hanging in her face, leaving bloody handprints on the floor: nothing he could do, just an image to take with him. He pointed the game warden down to the right, while he went straight ahead toward the shooting. Heard another boom, and kept running. . . .

  GRANT RAN DOWN the stairs, his feet pounding on the steps, briefcase slapping against his legs, screams ringing in his ears. He burst into the hallway and looked to his left. The door to the security wing was open, and Biggie Lighter was peering around the door frame, a smile wreathing his sallow face. When he saw Grant, Lighter stepped into the hallway.

  “Is this it?”

  “This is it. That goddamned Davenport got me.” Grant reached into the briefcase, saw Taylor behind Biggie, gave Biggie a pistol, and passed one to Taylor. “Is Chase . . . ?”

  “He’s fucked up, but he’s walking around.” Biggie peered at the gun. “How many shots?”

  “Eight,” Grant said. “They jumped me, and I didn’t have time to get more clips.” He looked past him at Taylor. “You’ve got ten. Both of them are loaded and ready to go. Push the safety off and pull the trigger.”

  Taylor nodded. “I’m familiar with this model.” They heard somebody talking, loud, and Taylor looked over his shoulder. “Here comes Chase.”

  Biggie scuttled off down the hall, toward the doorway. “I’m going up to three. I’m going to shoot Morris Knight. See you in hell.” Taylor went after him, calling out, “I get Landis. I get Landis.” Grant watched them go, took his own pistol out of his pocket as Chase pushed through the door.

  Chase stared at him for a moment, his eyes shifting to the pistol. He said, “Good. Give it to me.”

  “This is mine,” Grant said. “Come on with me, and we’ll get you one upstairs.”

  “MINE,” Chase screamed, and he launched himself at Grant; Grant wasn’t ready for it, and they went down to the floor, Grant
’s head snapping back against the terrazzo.

  Stunned, he struggled to keep the gun, but Chase had it with both hands, Grant had only the one hand, and Chase wrenched it free.

  Grant scrambled to his feet. “Give me the goddamned—”

  Chase screamed, “Shut up,” and pointed the pistol at Grant’s face.

  “Don’t do that . . .” But Grant saw the developing flinch in Chase’s eyes and jerked his head away. He was smashed in the face, felt a separate impact when his head hit the floor again, never heard it, never heard the gunshot, then everything went red, and a lightning stroke of pain ripped through his body . . .

  LUCAS WENT INTO the stairwell intending to go down to the isolation area, but heard another shot, and it seemed to be up. He went up instead, leading with his pistol. He could hear people screaming, several of them.

  At the top of the flight, he got to his knees and did a quick peek both ways down the hall, then a longer look. Two people were lying prone in the hallway, two or three others running away from him, and four or five were either standing or crouched against walls, two with their hands wrapped over their heads.

  Two guys were fighting; rolling around, screaming at each other, but were apparently armed with nothing but their fists. The alarms were still belching out the raucous, enervating brenk brenk brenk, and he could smell smoke but not see any. Two emergency lights were working far down the hall, but closer by he could see glass from two more, shattered.

  Then a shot came from his right, and there was more screaming, and he ran that way. Three people ran toward him, and then past him, shrinking from his gun. He was halfway down the hall when a man lurched into it, seemed to have a gun, was walking in a predatory way. Lucas shouted, “Drop the gun,” and the man pivoted into a gunfighter’s stance and Lucas fired and the other man fired at the same time, and Lucas went sideways and hit the wall and landed on his face and the man tumbled back through the doorway and out of sight.

  Lucas didn’t think he’d hit him and kept his pistol on the door, could hear somebody sobbing. Then a woman began a high-pitched keening and then another. A man lurched from another doorway, a slender man in a hospital gown, nobody Lucas had ever seen, and he seemed confused and Lucas began shouting, “Stay back, stay back,” but the man continued walking, stepped in front of the doorway where the shooter had been, and Lucas heard somebody yell, “Hey, Don.”

  The man pivoted toward the doorway and a shot ripped through him and he staggered and went down and Lucas jumped to his feet and ran softly, half crouched, down to the door.

  A half second away from it, he fired a single shot at the in-slanted steel door and then did a quick head-peek inside. He’d hoped that the single shot would have jarred the man on the other side, and it had: Taylor stood there in a combat stance but with the pistol pointed at the other side of the door.

  The instant he saw Lucas, he lifted his gun to fire, but Lucas jerked back, felt bullet fragments and maybe pieces of wall tile cut his face, dropped, and came in low. A shot banged the door above his head and he pushed his arm and face low around the door frame, center mass, and fired two quick shots into Taylor’s body.

  Taylor sagged and struggled to control his weapon and Lucas brought the .45 up and fired a third shot, from three feet away, into Taylor’s forehead. Taylor went down, dead.

  THERE WAS A DEAD WOMAN inside the room with Taylor, and another woman, apparently shot but still alive, huddling under a bed, whimpering. Lucas turned back to the hallway, looked both ways, pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, found Cale’s number, and rang him. Busy. He tried Sloan’s, got him.

  “Where are you?”

  “Just inside, Jesus Christ . . .”

  “Shut up. Listen to me. The Big Three are out, and they’re armed. They have pistols. I just nailed Taylor. I’m on the second floor, right above the stairway that goes down to the isolation area . . . You know where I’m talking?”

  “Yeah, we’re coming that way, me and Jenkins and Shrake . . .”

  “Okay, but Biggie and Chase and Grant are still out there. Be careful, there are guys with guns all over the place. I’m going down to the bottom, down to the isolation unit. Before you come in, tell somebody that there are a couple wounded, maybe dead, in this hallway . . . next floor above the main floor.”

  “Wait and I’ll back you up.”

  “Can’t wait. There are three more guys and they’re killing people, we’ve got to cover as much as we can as fast as we can, we’ve gotta knock these guys down . . . gotta knock ’em down, be careful, man, be careful. And tell Beloit before you come in that there’s a wounded woman in two ninety. In two ninety.”

  THEN HE WAS UP and running down the hall, the smell of blood in his nose, with the odor of smoke and human waste and the deafening brenk brenk brenk . . .

  Into the stairwell: he nearly shot a man halfway up the second flight, the man jumping with fear as Lucas jerked his .45 at him, Lucas lifting his finger off the trigger at the last possible second when he realized that he didn’t know the man, that the man wasn’t armed.

  The man curled against the wall, his hands cupped at his temples, and Lucas shouted, “Find a room, lock yourself inside,” heard a boom from somewhere, then another, couldn’t decide where the shots came from, but it felt like they were up again.

  He’d thought to go down, but again he went up.

  There really wasn’t much down below, he realized—not many people. If the Big Three and Grant were determined to do as much damage as possible, they’d be on the first floor, or the second or third. He continued up to three, heard another boom. Peeked down the hallway, saw more people down. Two people crawling along the hallway, two lying motionless. More smoke, thin, veiling. Shouting from the left. Doors banging, another boom.

  His phone rang; he wanted to ignore it, but it could be information. He pulled it out, poked the answer button. Sloan: “We can hear shooting above us, we’re on the way to three.”

  “I’m already there. I went up instead of down.”

  “We’re on the front steps . . .”

  “I just came up the back. I’m moving into the hallway, you’ll be looking right at me, for Christ’s sake, don’t shoot me . . .”

  Two more booms and a man screaming and Lucas couldn’t wait, a shattering of glass, more glass breaking, more screaming, and then laughter. Lucas ran to the doorway where the sound seemed to be coming from, did a peek: a man was battering at a thick glass window with a plastic chair.

  In the dim light, he couldn’t see who it was, but he thought it might be Lighter. Lucas shouted, “Hey,” and the man turned, and Lucas saw that it wasn’t Lighter, that he didn’t recognize the man at all. Then he saw movement on his right and pivoted and saw a flash, was hit hard in the left arm, taking in the boom, felt himself falling and jerked two shots in the direction of the flash and crawled back out through the doorway into the hall. There was crouching, combat-style movement down the hall and he shouted, “Help!”

  Sloan shouted back, “Where are you?”

  “Down here. I’m hit.”

  “Ah, Jesus . . .”

  Sloan ran to him in the dim light; the smell of smoke was stronger now, and Sloan came up, Shrake a step behind.

  “How bad?” Sloan asked.

  The pain was coming on. “I think my arm’s busted. Left arm,” Lucas said. “There’s a guy in there to the right. At least a couple people down. I don’t think I hit him when I fired back.”

  SHRAKE DID A PEEK, then put his left arm through the doorway, with his face, ready to fire. Sloan was cutting at Lucas’s sport coat with a jackknife. “Let me see . . . ah, man, you got a hole. It’s not bleeding too bad, but it’s right below your biceps, right in the middle.”

  “Yeah, that’s what it feels like,” Lucas groaned. “I can feel a piece moving . . . We gotta take this guy.”

  “You’re out of it,” Sloan said.

  “I can move okay,” Lucas said. He stood up, almost fell, propped himsel
f against the wall. There was smoke now, another fire, the hallways clear except for a man at the far end, dragging a mattress for some reason. “Look: I’ll go back down and sit in the stairway, block it off. You guys gotta keep this asshole penned up, or take him. There’s somebody in there hurt.”

  “You know who it is?”

  “No. Could be Biggie,” Lucas said.

  “That motherfucker,” Sloan said. “You go on. We’ll take him.”

  “Get some more support up here,” Shrake said. “Jenkins went off with that crappie cop, they could hear something down on one.”

  “Cell phone,” Lucas said. “I can’t use mine . . .”

  “Get your ass down to the stairwell,” Sloan said. “We’ll take care of this.”

  JENKINS AND THE game warden, whose name was Deacon, saw the flash of the gunshot and moved slowly down the inside wall of the hallway, closing on the door. They found Chase sitting on the shoulders of a dead man, as though the dead man were a low stool, talking to a woman who had propped herself up against a wall. They could hear Chase’s voice before they saw him; a low chatter that continued between the brenk brenk brenk of the alarms. When they got right next to the door, they could hear his voice distinctly, as he talked over the racket around them.

  “. . . is dead, because if he wasn’t dead, he couldn’t stand it when I put my finger on his eyeball like this. But see, he doesn’t even blink. There’s still some blood running out, but that’s gravity, is what it is. Just like when you cut a chicken’s head off, the blood keeps coming for a long time, but the chicken is dead. Have you ever seen anybody do that? No? It’s pretty exciting. You get the chicken and you hold it by its legs, and you rub its stomach and it’ll get real quiet, then you lay the neck on a block and then really quick, chop, and the head flies off. If you let go of the chicken, the body will run all over the place without a head. It’s pretty funny, when you see it . . .”

  Jenkins risked a peek. The room was fifteen-by-fifteen feet and the man was sitting with his back to Jenkins, not more than seven or eight feet away. He was pointing a pistol at a woman against the far wall, who sat motionless, head down; she had blood on her blouse. Jenkins was not sure she was alive. He had to assume she was, though, and she was also directly on the other side of the man. If he shot the man, the bullet could go right through him into her . . .