Pavlov's Dogs (30 page)

A thought floated in Donovan’s head as they walked; how had Jaden cast his vote? When Crispin had polled the island personnel on whether to send the Dogs on a rescue mission, how had he cast his vote? Donovan couldn’t remember.

They came to the entrance into Command, and Jaden gestured to the retinal scan. “Sir.”

Donovan fought it, but he knew the deer in the headlights look had just come over his face.

“Sir?”

“Sorry,” Donovan said, scrambling to collect his thoughts. The little red cooler was hidden, and there was no way he would just pull it out in front of Jaden. He shivered, thinking of what was in the cooler, and how it looked when he opened it, as if Crispin were staring—

Shaking this image out of his head, Donovan stepped up to the retinal scanner. He knew that
Jaden
knew that everything in Command was tailored to suit Dr. Crispin. But what other choice did he have? He couldn’t even do this simple task quite right: Dr. Crispin had stood a head taller than Donovan, so the new project director had to balance on his tiptoes to reach the retinal scan.

He let it flash across his eyes, once horizontally, once vertically. The lights under the scanner flashed red, and he made a show of sighing and doing it again.

“It’s not working,” Donovan said, slapping the side of the metal box as if that might help.

Then he was thrust face-first into the wall, his forehead bouncing off the bottom edge of the scanner.

Jaden’s rough hand held him there by the back of the neck. Donovan opened his mouth to yell, but stopped when a hard, metal circle touched him behind the right ear. He went up on his tiptoes again, trying to get away from the cold ring.

The hand left the back of his neck to pat him down, quickly and efficiently. Jaden confiscated Donovan’s gun, and the project director’s hope of getting out of this alive fell sharply. The barrel in the back of his head never moved.

“I could cry out,” Donovan said, his lips brushing the cool metal of the scanner panel.

Jaden laughed, a harsh sound in the lonely hallway. “You go ahead and do that. And, sure, someone might come along. And they might even kill me. But...” He moved the gun in a rotating motion. “Your brains will be all over the retinal scan before you’ve finished yelling. What’s your percentage in that?”

The frisk was repeated, this time more thoroughly. “Where is it?” Jaden asked, his voice raspy and close to Donovan’s left ear.

“Wh-where’s what?”

“Have you forgotten what it is I do around here? People lie to me on a daily basis. I would be a pretty shitty head of security if I couldn’t tell when I was being lied to.” Pressure from the gun increased. “Or when I’m being stalled while you think of a good lie. So don’t. Where is Crispin’s eyeball?”

“It fell apart.”

Donovan felt the click of metal-on-metal as Jaden pulled the hammer back on the gun.

“Honest to God! I swear! Do you know how quickly the retina deteriorates? Once the eye is removed from the skull?”

“Doctor,” Jaden said, his voice no longer menacing, which was somehow worse. “I know all about what happens to eyes outside of the skull.”

Donovan’s mind whirled. Could he fool this man? Could he lead him toward the Dogs somehow and entrap him? The Sigmas accepted Donovan as Master, and they wouldn’t let this treachery stand.

“I’m really considering making this easy on myself,” Jaden said, shattering Donovan’s train of thought. “I don’t even have to make any noise by pulling the trigger. I have a knife on my belt that would fit nicely between the C5 and C6 vertebrae. Or is it the C6 and C7? I may forget at the last moment and just paralyze you instead of killing you. Head on a stick. Either way, I know the eye’s around here somewhere. You were headed right this way when I found you.”

“Fine,” Donovan spat. “Fine! But you’ll have to unhand me.”

Jaden smirked at that, but stepped back, keeping the 9mm trained on Donovan. The doctor went around to the maintenance panel and popped it open, revealing the red cooler.

“Scan it,” Jaden said.

Donovan held the eyeball up, and the scan illuminated it from the inside, a cool blue glow that made the doctor feel sick.

As they stepped into Command, Jaden immediately noticed the black square on the big screen.

“Why is McLoughlin’s screen blank?”

Donovan looked down, and Jaden stepped closer, the 9mm leveled at the doctor’s navel. “You son of a bitch.”

Eyes rolling all the way up to track the gun, Donovan saw the tip of Jaden’s finger whiten as it tightened against the trigger. The gun didn’t make its one note, though. Instead, Jaden tilted his head at the Command station.

“Show me,” he said.

Stiff-legged, Donovan walked over to the big screen and motioned with his fingertip to one side, sliding McLoughlin’s black square away. He expanded his thumb and forefinger over Hayte’s screen, zooming in. The Theta was in the barracks, talking to Rose and playing cards.

“This... this is, ah, from here we can either take direct actions, using the Dog as a puppet, or...”

Donovan thought furiously. Was Jaden trying to take over? Already? That was totally, completely
unfair
.

“... or, through a series of commands, we can adjust the Dog’s neuro-chemical impulses to alter his actions, or reactions.” He thought about calling one of the Dogs to Command to end this treachery once and for all, but Jaden would see him do it. The security man wasn’t stupid. And he now had two guns. And that knife.

Donovan typed in a string of code designed to increase Hayte’s heartbeat. “See, just this one thing, that will alter the outcome of his game. Watch how his focus changes.”

Jaden stepped closer to the large monitor, and Donovan lunged sideways, whacking the security chief’s gun hand with his clipboard. Jaden turned, and Donovan was on him, hands wrapped around his neck. As they fell, Dr. Crispin’s sentimental coffee mug came with them, shattering next to Jaden’s startled face.

But his surprise didn’t last long. He swung a brutal elbow down across Donovan’s forearms, and the neurotech let go. With an easy sweep, the security man reversed their positions. He leaned down, keeping his right forearms across Donovan’s throat.

“Thank you, Doctor. I didn’t really want to kill you. I just wanted to make you suffer. But since you’re giving me this wonderful excuse...”

“Radio,” Donovan croaked out. “Attack plan.”

Eyes wide, Jaden sat up, and Donovan’s hand swung up in tandem, bringing the broken handle of the WORLD’S BEST DAD cup with it. The triangular shard on the business end stuck into the security chief’s neck.

Everything stopped.

Jaden’s eyes got even wider.

Donovan pulled the handle away and blood spritzed all over his face.

Something in the neurotech snapped. He jabbed the shard into Jaden’s neck again, over and over, and the blood kept coming, spurting out with the failing action of Jaden’s heart and the force of Donovan’s thrusts. Sprays and squirts flooded the director’s cheeks and forehead; he could taste its coppery, salty tang. He grinned, getting the blood on his teeth.

The shard went in one last time and the force of it broke the triangular piece off in the flesh.

He pushed Jaden away, and the security man fell backwards, trying to hold the ruins of his neck, hands twitching and feet kicking. His face had gone grey, and his eyes rolled up to meet Donovan’s. His lips moved, but there was no sound.

Donovan got up on his knees. “What?” He put his ear closer to Jaden’s mouth.

“Fuck yourself,” the man said, and his chest rumbled as he gurgled out his last wet breath.

Donovan fell back, sitting in the expanding puddle of blood that he—
he
had released from Jaden’s throat. The project director wiped a shaky hand across his face, smearing the blood.

He did it. Not Kaiser. Not one of the Sigmas.
He
did it. He’d never been in a real fight before. And he had survived.

“Where Crispin failed,” he whispered, “I have persevered.”

He got to his feet, slipping in the blood, and then stood up straight, hands still shaking. Everything seemed so clear. Every detail in his vision was crystal clear.

So clear!

He picked up the handset and dialed 0. When the comms officer picked up, Donovan smiled.

“Tell Kaiser—hah! Tell him he’ll get his competition.”

KEN RAN DOWN THE AISLE of the supermarket, his cart full. “That’s the toy train set. Kelly’s got the road emergency kit. Is that everything?”

Julius stood in the aisle intersection, reading his list, one finger in the air. “Blowtorches?”

Ken stopped running. “I thought you had one?”

“
One
. We need two more.”

Ken turned back, then looked down at the cart and left it where it stood. He caught a glimpse of Mac standing at the front doors of the store, a tire iron in each hand. Even if he couldn’t turn into a werewolf or whatever on command anymore, he was still a big, scary dude with Special Forces training, and Ken was glad he was there.

Kelly passed by with her cart full. “That’s the road emergency kit, all the CO2 canisters I could find, and all the shotgun shells and ammunition they had under the counter. We don’t even have guns that will fire some of this stuff, Julius.”

He nodded, checking off items on his list. “What about the chlorine tablets?”

“Um...”

He pointed back down the aisle she had come from.

Running up with a blowtorch in each hand, Ken whistled. “This is it?”

“Light bulbs and the five-gallon jugs?”

Ken turned back, and Mac laughed.

“You are running them ragged, old man.”

Julius cocked his head. “Teach ’em to read a list right the first time.”

Ken and Kelly made more trips. Water filters. Mason jars. Nails. Leather belts. When finally Julius folded the list and stuck it in his pocket, the tired pair looked over their haul. “How are we going to get all this back to the shop?”

Mac laughed again. “Trips. Lots of trips.”

For the rest of the day, Ken, Kelly, and a handful of volunteers trekked from the store to the shop, with Mac “riding shotgun” each time. They encountered small knots of the dead, but the noisemaker Julius had set up across the street from the shop’s big roll-up door kept them there, away from the survivors’ access to the rooftops.

On the last trip, Ken came down a fire-escape ladder to find Mac down on one knee, surrounded by a quartet of laid-out zombies. The tire irons were on the street, and Mac looked as if he was having trouble standing. Ken rushed over.

“You all right, man? Did one of those things—”

“I’m fine,” Mac said, heaving himself to his feet. He walked to the tire irons and picked them up. “Let’s just hit the road already. We got more trips to make for food, now that all of Julius’s toys are gathered.”

He turned away and jogged slowly down the street. Ken watched him go, eyeing him up and down, looking for blood. He waved Kelly down, and she and Ken ran after the old Alpha Dog.

“What happened?” Kelly said.

Ken shrugged. “He was down when I got to him. He looks bad.”

Thuds from ahead drew their attention, and Ken poured on a burst of speed. His hand fell to his beltline, where a police baton hung. They had decided, for these runs, silence was crucial: no guns, no unintentional noisemakers.

Ken drew his baton and laid into the zombies on Mac’s unprotected side. The Alpha Dog was doing well, but he was slowing. Kelly caught a glimpse of darkened material on his side, and she didn’t think it was sweat.

Snapping out her Maxam collapsible baton, Kelly swung and knocked away a zombie approaching from Ken’s blind side. “Back to back,” she said.

Mac stepped away. “You two go back to back,” he replied, grunting and swinging the tire irons with deadly effect. Kelly saw the web of black iron he wove around himself and urged Ken a little farther away.

The trio made quick work of the knot of walking corpses. Preparing to move on, Mac fell to one knee again. His bald and newly-healed head was pouring sweat. Ken stepped over to help him up, but the Alpha Dog snarled and waved him off.

Hands up and backing away, Ken said, “Fine. Fine, whatever. Whenever you’re ready.”

Once inside the store, Mac closed the security gate and chained them shut. He collapsed in a heap there, waving Ken and Kelly on.

Kelly stepped forward, but Ken stopped her, shaking his head. “We have to fill these bags. People got to eat.”

Pulling on her arm gently, he guided Kelly away from the reclining Dog.

She pulled her arm away. “I know that. But he could be really badly hurt. You macho boys don’t like to fess up to shit like that.”

Ken turned to her. “He could have been bitten,” he said in a low voice. “You’ve seen him go at it when the zombies get close. He’s used to a melee fight when he’s got teeth and claws and fur. Don’t get me wrong, he scares me plenty. But he’s not as fast as he’s used to being, and yet he still throws himself at them anyway.”