Cure (24 page)

48
.

Reid locked the Security Office door behind him. He wouldn’t be caught off-guard again.

A montage of his recent murders played back in his head and he rode out the memories like a junkie on a high, stopping only when his radio crackled. He checked to make sure it was on the right frequency and lowered the volume. 

There was work to do.

A blue, plastic top stretched over one of a dozen silver keys made the arsenal key an easy find. He went into the hidden back room and scanned the wall full of weapons.
Emergency supplies for the bedlam he was secretly enjoying.
He took down a spare pistol and as much ammunition as his pockets would hold. He loaded two high-capacity clips with thirty rounds each and grabbed a hunting knife with a gut-hook on the back.

Satisfied that he had what he needed, he returned to the lobby. The load of weapons and ammo felt good as his muscles engaged to carry the weight.

The anticipation of the hunt was close to true happiness, but his bliss was short-lived.

In the brief time he was gone, someone else had been there.

He picked up his two-way. “Foster, you piece of shit, answer me.”
If he let Miranda out, he was dead.
“Foster, this is Reid. Answer your goddamned radio.”

Shit.

The IV pole had been moved and a sheet covered Mark’s body. A soiled pair of boxers lay against the wall and several trails of fresh blood made it hard to theorize what happened. If it was Miranda who had been there, she wasn’t alone.

He tracked the bloody footprint smears to the elevator where the numbered lights had stopped at three.

Reid slammed the heel of his boot hard enough into the elevator door to dent the metal. He pushed the call button and growled at the car’s slow descent.

Three. Two. One.

The door strained open, clunking along in its track. Part of him thought it best to clear Ambulatory Surgery, to see what was in there, alive or undead, but he knew better. Nixon wanted Miranda back and there was no way that IV pole moved itself. What started as an obvious distraction, releasing the infected, was about to become a pandemic.

He stepped into the waiting car, eyeing the blood pools, the tire tracks, and footprints, and knew Miranda had made it back to the ward. There were too many different, small prints for that not to be the case. He slammed his fist into the wall and his head spun.

He was losing control and had to get it back before Nixon found out how bad things were.

The elevator stopped at the third floor. He drew the knife from his belt, preparing to attack, and sighed when the door opened to emptiness. He followed the blood trail down an empty hallway, the red becoming increasingly faint as it meandered through the vacant neurology wing toward the fire door at the back. He stared at the drag mark pattern. Two parallel lines.
Like a pair of severed legs. The amputee he left in the recovery room.

There were only two ways an infected got upstairs: either it was alive and looking for help before it changed or someone lured it up there as a viral bomb to take out what was left of the center. With any luck, Miranda and the rest of them were dumb enough to get themselves cornered.

The trail stopped at the secured fire door.

Reid heard the screams before he turned the knob.

This was all Miranda’s fault.

If she wasn’t on the other side, he vowed to find her and pay her back.

Payback is what he was made for. 

49
.

The arsenal had been ransacked leaving only a single spare pistol, which Foster tucked into his waistband before heading toward Nixon’s office.

Miranda tried to keep up, but Penny slowed her down.

 “I thought you said there were weapons in there.” Scott shook his head.

“Someone beat us to them. Probably Reid.”

“Hey, can you two wait up?” Miranda called up from one turn of the staircase behind them and Scott stopped.

“You two all right?” he asked.

Penny moved increasingly slowly, her arms crossed over her stomach.

“We’re fine.” Miranda offered for Penny to lean on her. “We
are
fine, right?” she asked under her breath.

Penny winced and cracked a fake smile. “Too much time in bed, I guess. I’ll be okay.” Her normally vibrant blue eyes paled to a muted slate.

Miranda saw through her attempt at being strong and regretted not insisting she go with Frank and the others
.
“If you need to take a break, Foster can stay with you.”

A blush of embarrassment painted Penny’s cheeks and she bowed her head. “I’d rather have another woman nearby.”

Miranda managed a smile, but her heart ached. Penny was too pure, too virginal and naïve for so much pain and suffering. Miranda hooked her arm around Penny’s waist and pulled her wrist over her shoulder.

Scott held the hallway door open and brushed his hand across Miranda’s back as she passed him. She didn’t move away from his touch.
Things between them were better than they had been in a long time, even if only because of the stress.

“Nixon’s office is the last on the right,” Foster said, but he didn’t have to.

The rattling of metal on metal and a stream of profanity echoed down the hall.

Zach.

Miranda handed Penny off to Foster and picked up her pace, breaking into a jog despite her weary and aching legs.

Scott met her speed.

“What the hell happened?” Miranda stifled a gasp when she saw Zach handcuffed to the radiator. His face was red, his forehead sweaty, and blood streaked his arm from his wrist to his elbow. Thunder boomed and the lights flickered. Miranda knelt next to him and gently lifted his hand. “Oh my God.” Zach pulled away, the cuff catching at the end and fresh blood running from the wound. “Stop tugging.” Despite Zach’s attempt at hiding it, she could tell Zach had been crying. “Foster, get in here. Give me your handcuff key.”

“Zach, where’s Lenny?” Scott asked.

“He set me up. Last I saw him, he was with Reid.”

There was so much about Miranda’s rescue she didn’t know.

Foster helped Penny into the leather chair behind Nixon’s desk and handed Miranda his key.

Penny groaned and drew in a deep breath.

“Are you
sure
you are all right?” Miranda asked.

Penny shook her head. “I think so.” She strained to speak.

Miranda gently assessed Zach’s wounds, Scott’s jealous stare burning a hole in her back. She fit the tiny key in the lock and turned it. The cuff released and Zach struggled to stand. His knees and ankles snapped and popped. He staggered to the window and stared down at the helipad.

Miranda followed after him.

A bright, white light illuminated the caravan of staff loading boxes and equipment into Nixon’s chopper. The storm beat down on them, but none of them so much as flinched.

They were moving the experiment.

Zach rubbed the intact skin above the bleeding abrasions on his wrist. He flexed his fingers and placed his palms to the glass. “I have to get Allison back.”

Miranda wrapped her arm around him and put her head on his shoulder. “Zach, I’m so sorry.”

The packages slowed to a trickle, an indication the staff had completed the loading.

Heavy drops of rain bounced off the window like hail.

“You can’t go out there,” Miranda said. “Even without the storm, even with our help, you’re still outnumbered."

“Look.” Scott leaned forward until his forehead touched the glass.

Nixon’s lab coat stuck out against the blackness, the white sheet over the cart as visible and contrasting. The rain drenched him and soaked the sheet, exposing the shape beneath it. An intern carried an IV pole behind him.

It was a body.

“Allison!” Zach let out a pained cry and slammed his fist into the window. His hand ricocheted and he howled in pain.

 “We’ll get her back,” Scott said, but the room of sad faces made it clear that none of them believed that.

 “Not if they leave.” Zach pressed his face closer to the glass, his eyes wide and unblinking.

Allison was loaded first. An intern tried to get an umbrella over Nixon’s head, but the howling wind turned it inside out and pulled it from his hand. Nixon climbed into the chopper and disappeared from view.

Miranda sniffled and wiped her burning eyes with the back of her hand. She didn’t know how much more loss she could take.

Zach looked away, unable to watch the helicopter take off.

Penny let out a pained cry and doubled over, wrapping her arms around her knees.

Miranda went to her and rubbed her back. Heat radiated through her cotton shirt.

Scott shook his head and without further acknowledging Penny, rummaged the scattered papers on Nixon’s desktop. “We don’t have time for this, Miranda. We have to find your file. You should have made her go with Frank.” He opened the drawers in succession and slammed them closed progressively louder. “Stethoscope, pens, Post-it notes. There’s nothing here.”

Penny drew a long breath. “I’m okay. Really. Help him look.”

Foster filled a paper cup at the water cooler and handed it to Penny who was rocking in the chair to stave off the discomfort. She sat still only long enough to take a sip and then set it on the desk next to her.

Miranda picked through a stack of files on Nixon’s credenza.

Scott tugged on the top drawer of a locked file cabinet. “Miranda, hand me the ax.”

“Here,” she said.

He waved for her to step back and when she was clear of him, took a rounded swing at the lock in corner of the cabinet. There was a loud smash and the strain of bending metal. Penny covered her ears, the shrill noise seeming to make her pain, or at least her tolerance of it, worse.

The lock gave and Scott yanked the drawer so hard its contents scattered on the floor.

Miranda sifted through the rubble, glancing at Zach who put on his shoe and absently stared out the window.

Foster paced between Penny and the hallway. “Anything?” he asked.

 “Nothing,” Scott said. “Graphs, spreadsheets, blueprints for some kind of expansion.”

A door slammed and Foster jumped. He got Penny immediately on her feet. “I have to get her out of here.”

Penny moaned, sweat dotting her brow.

“Take her to the lobby,” Miranda said. “We’ll catch up.”

Scott nodded in Zach’s direction. “He should go, too.”

“I don’t want to,” Zach said, wiping his swollen eyes and smearing the blood from his wrist across his face. He looked at Miranda in a way that made her uncomfortable, like he was tracking her.

“Go,” she said. “Foster can’t handle Penny alone.”

“I’d rather…”

“Now,” Miranda insisted.

Zach grudgingly agreed.

“What’s with him?” Scott asked once he was out of earshot.

Miranda shrugged. “He just lost his wife.” She only partly believed her own excuse. Zach had been acting strangely, watching her too closely. She was what Nixon wanted most.
What if Nixon proposed him turning her over in exchange for Allison’s release?
Scott had yet to draw that conclusion, but it was only a matter of time.

50
.

Life on the unit had been exterminated, the virus efficient in its spread. Blood-spattered gurneys lined the hall and a trail of discarded IV tubes and catheters signaled the infected that broke from the herd. Reid ducked behind an abandoned supply cart, warned by the shuffling of slippers of one such defector’s approach.
He could take them out one or a few at a time, but not all of them at once.
He tightened the grip on his knife handle.

A male infected-- in his thirties if Reid had to guess--rounded the corner. His deadpan stare fixed on something in the distance and his lumbering gait gave Reid the peace of mind that he hadn’t been spotted.
It’d be moving much quicker if he had.
Tension mounted as the Id moved closer. Reid waited for it to pass him and grabbed it from behind. He held his breath to avoid inhaling the decomposing stench and hooked his arm around its neck, choking up on his grip to prevent a bite. His pulse pounded as he lifted the infected man’s chin and settled his blade under his Adam’s apple. A single, sharp pull severed the trachea and settled his knife between two vertebrae. He ripped his blade the rest of the way through, completing the decapitation, and the body fell to the floor. Reid wiped his face on his sleeve.

It was a quick and unsatisfying kill, but a necessary one.

He huffed until his breathing steadied, the foul smell filling his lungs in spite of turning his head.

A soft, whimpering noise caught his attention.

Miranda.
He tip-toed toward the noise, disappointed to find a young, red-headed medical assistant instead. The girl balled up in the fetal position, sobbing beneath the nurse’s station counter. Her pink, striped uniform sleeve was torn and an angry, red bite mark stared back at him from her ivory, freckled shoulder.

“Help me,” she whispered, shivering and frantic, but not yet beginning to the change.

Reid drew his pistol and she screamed.

She covered her mouth with both hands and tears sprang from her wide green eyes, the telltale film, so far, absent.

He pressed his finger to his lips, drinking in her panic.
Shhh.
She clamped down harder, her knuckles turning white, but it didn’t matter. She was too late.

The mindless pack of infected were drawn by her scream. They moved quickly and clumsily, knocking over equipment and each other in their dogged determination to consume the last remaining live flesh.

A middle-aged woman with a freshly cut tracheotomy in the center of her neck led the pack. The wound tract was disrupted, pulled wide apart and dark blood trickled down the front of her faded hospital gown. An IV line dangled from her left arm and dragged on the ground next to her. Her right ankle appeared broken, bent at so severe of an angle the instep of her foot laid flat against the floor. Abrasions and stitches disfigured her swollen and bruised face.