Ripper (47 page)

“Airman, I would feel much better if I was able to move about. Release me from this bed—it may be a bit too heavy to run with it on
my back.”

“Colonel, you know I can’t. Captain Everett was specific in his orders about you.”

“I think the colonel’s right. I’ll take responsibility,” Denise said as her eyes turned from the elevator doors to the far wall where the stairwell was located. “I’m officially saying that his circulation is being cut off and am ordering the cuffs removed.”

The sergeant looked hesitant but then pulled
his sidearm and tossed the key to the doctor.

“A wise decision Airman,” Henri said as he watched Denise undo his restraints.

“Colonel, make no mistake; I will shoot you if you try anything.”

As the cuffs were removed Henri flexed his wrists and sat up enough to place his bare feet on the floor.

“I’m afraid by the sound of that racket in the walls and elevator shaft, you may have to shoot something.”

All eyes were on the elevator doors as the pounding got louder and louder. The tension was building as whatever was making the horrible sound was growing closer. Suddenly the door to the stairwell burst open. The sergeant turned with his nine millimeter poised to blast their visitor. It was Henri who reached out and forced the gun barrel down just as Virginia Pollock, Sarah, Gloria Bannister,
and Will Mendenhall came through the door. They watched as Will closed the door and then slowly started backing away from it as if he expected something to burst through it at anytime.

“God,” the airman said, grateful that the Frenchman forced his aim off as he had come close to killing Dr. Pollock. “Doctor, Lieutenant McIntire, I almost shot you!”

Farbeaux watched as Sarah caught her breath.
His eyes told him that she had received far more damage to her head and face. Still breathing hard, Sarah saw Henri and their eyes locked. She immediately went to the side of the bed where the Frenchman was trying to get to his feet. She took his hand but said nothing. As for Farbeaux, he just felt the warmth of her touch but made no move to comfort her.

“What in God’s name is that noise?” Denise
asked as Mendenhall joined the group, still looking at the stairwell door.

“Something real bad,” Virginia said as she hurried to the opposite side of the clinic and placed her ears to that door, hoping she wasn’t hearing anything from there like they had heard at the door they just exited.

“Sergeant, we need more weapons. Is that all we have on this level?” Mendenhall asked as his eyes never
left the stairwell they had just left.

“Yes, sir, and the radios are out. We’re not picking up anything.”

“Our security teams are scattered all over the damn complex. As long as we are keeping to the stairwells, any signals will have one hell of a hard time getting through all of this steel. The radios are meant for use in the complex, not its inner workings,” Will said as an even louder bang
sounded from the elevator shaft. Mendenhall reached out and took Gloria’s hand, pulling the frightened woman close to him when she jumped at the sound.

“What in the hell is in the tubes?” Dr. Gilliam asked as another large bang sounded from either two levels down or maybe even closer.

“The men who attacked the complex, they’ve changed. The formula is reacting just the way it did in Mexico, only
this is different; it’s like they have actually grown far more than Guzman and his men. The higher dose of Perdition’s Fire, it was in the clean room like a fog—the exposure was far more than at the hacienda,” Will said as he stood in front of the weakened Sarah and frightened CDC doctor.

“Dr. Pollock, I know this is not your field of specialty, but perhaps you can give us something that could
explain the impossible way in which these men have grown. It cannot just be the hallucinatory effects of poppy splicing,” Farbeaux said as he reached out and took a pair of green surgical pants from a rack on the far wall. Trying to keep his balance, he slid his legs into them with much difficulty until Sarah stepped out from behind Mendenhall and held him up. Henri placed his arm around her and
squeezed as he finally accomplished the task.

Virginia walked quickly back into the main clinic and to the elevator doors, sliding her lab coat off as she did. She stopped in front of the doors and then without looking tossed the coat over to Farbeaux.

“Thank you Doctor,” Henri said as he tossed the hospital gown away and slid into the coat.

Virginia listened intently as the grunts and scraping
continued beneath them. The sound was getting louder, as if whatever it was was checking each floor for people before it moved on.

“I don’t know, but I do have a guess. That unknown element that the CDC doctors ran across, Europa was close to identifying it before she went down. She tagged the unknown as human tissue, but that was as far as she got. It was too arcane for the CDC’s analyzer to
identify,” she said as she started backing away from the elevator doors until she bumped into the now empty bed. “The only thing it can be that explains the unnatural growth of these men has to be an HGH synthesis that Ambrose created during his experiments.”

“HGH? That’s impossible,” Gloria said, finally thankful she had something to think about. “He couldn’t have synthesized anything close
to human growth hormones, not at the turn of the century.” Gloria allowed her mind to wander into the realm of impossibility for a moment. Then she vigorously shook her head, frightened at the prospects of the growth hormone in conjunction with the human brain power that had been opened up in the men who had basically overdosed on Perdition’s Fire. “The second unknown?” she said as she went into deep
thought.

“What’s that?” Virginia asked seeing the stunned look on the face of the CDC doctor.

“Could it be possible that this man was working on something related to stem cell research? There is no telling what he could have achieved. But that would have been impossible at the time. Ambrose was a barbarian compared to today’s scientists. He didn’t have the equipment necessary for the work.”

“Regardless of the impossibility of it Miss Bannister, we’re facing something that is a direct enemy of the natural laws of nature here. There can be no other explanation. The human body is capable of so much, but add to that the fact that the human brain has only used 10% of its power throughout human history and now it has been expanded to use 100 percent. What you have in the end is what is out
there: the brain mixing with a human growth hormone and possible embryo research, fetus material, if you prefer. The consequences are phenomenal,” Virginia said just as the first crash of steel sounded on the other side of the elevator doors, creating the smallest of bulges.

“I’m leaning toward the good doctor Pollock’s theory and the young lady’s guesswork,” Farbeaux said as he stood next to
Mendenhall. “Lieutenant, I know I’m not a citizen of your country, at least legally speaking, but I vote we get the hell out of here, and I would prefer to be armed as we run like hell for the surface of this menagerie.”

Will looked at Henri and nodded his head. “You don’t have to convince the U.S. Army, Colonel—everyone to the stairwell. Sergeant, give me the weapon and go with them. I’ll draw
that thing’s attention.”

Gloria reacted first as the second, much larger dent appeared in the double elevator doors, creating a small separation between them. She reached out and grabbed Will and just shook her head. “No, please don’t,” she said with pleading eyes.

“You go with Dr. Pollock and the others. Sarah and the colonel are too weak, they need a hand.”

“We all go, Will,” Virginia announced
loudly. “For once in my life, with Niles out of the complex, someone is going to damn well follow my orders.”

“Perhaps we can discuss this when we’re headed upward in the unaffected stairwell?” Henri said as he pulled Sarah to the left, heading for the opposite set of stairs just as eight very large and grotesque fingers pushed through the opening.

“Jesus,” the airman said as he pushed everyone
in the direction Farbeaux had taken with Sarah trailing. “Lieutenant, go!” he shouted at Mendenhall and the others.

Suddenly the doors separated and in the dark they saw the glowing eyes. The impossibility of it struck everyone as the eyes were radiating like those of a night-hunting animal. The brain of the affected was altering the way humans were seeing—Perdition’s Fire was adapting to its
situation.

As everyone turned and ran, the airman who was responsible, at least in his mind, for this level opened fire, catching the retreating Mendenhall off-guard. The lieutenant shoved Gloria forward toward the far exit door and turned as the airman emptied his nine millimeter into the creature that was even now balancing itself in the right half of the empty elevator doorframe. It was too
large to squeeze through such a small opening so it angrily started battering the left section of steel door, warping and bending it even as the powerful nine-millimeter rounds struck and penetrated its upper body. As each round hit, it would yell and roar in pain as it continued to battle with the steel of the remaining door.

Just as Mendenhall reached out to grab the young security man, the
beast had a similar thought as it leaned as far into the clinic as it could, bending the remaining door even further until it caught the airman while he was reloading. The beast’s grip was wrapped so powerfully around his neck that he dropped the Beretta with the clip still only partially inserted. Will reacted fast as the man was pulled toward the towering beast. As his struggles continued, Will
retrieved the weapon and finished inserting the clip. He quickly took aim at the monstrosity still struggling in the elevator opening. When he saw he couldn’t get a shot in without hitting the terrified security man, Will placed the gun in his waistband and attacked.

The beast was caught off-guard by the blows raining into its face delivered by Mendenhall. It reacted by squeezing his grip even
harder on the airman. The beast roared with insult as Will continued to fight for the young security man’s life. Then, even through the screams of outrage from the creature, Will heard the airman’s neck snap. It was a sound the lieutenant would never forget. The struggles of the giant and the security man ceased at once. The beast let the boy slip through its grip as the large, unnatural eyes fell
on Will. The giant brows rose and the creature smiled. With its bare chest almost through the door it reached out with lightning-quick speed and grabbed Mendenhall around the neck. The lieutenant knew that he hadn’t moved fast enough just as his life force was being squeezed from his body.

Suddenly the grip was released and a roar of pain sounded that actually shook the pictures from the clinic’s
walls. As Will fell to the floor he looked up in time to see Henri Farbeaux step away from the flailing, infuriated giant. Then Mendenhall finally saw why the beast had let go as it pulled the ballpoint pen from its right eye. Farbeaux and Sarah were there to pull him up and out of the creature’s flailing arms.

“Thanks!” he screamed.

As they ran for the stairwell door being held open by Virginia
and Dr. Gilliam, Farbeaux looked back as the creature now began to concentrate on the only remaining obstacle trapping it, the second door.

“This is the second time I’ve been here, and I must say you people go out of your way to make my stay vigorous and exciting,” Henri said.

A choking Mendenhall reached the door and allowed Henri and Sarah to go through first just as the beast bent over the
remaining door.

“That’s what we’re here for Colonel, to make sure your days are filled with wonder and awe.”

Virginia cursed and pulled Will into the complete darkness of the stairwell.

*   *   *

For the first time in Compton’s fifteen years and Pete Golding’s ten at the Event Group, they saw the computer center go dark. With Europa being down for the first time ever, the sight was surreal
for both men. As Pete pushed the large bulletproof glass security door open, he realized with the only lighting coming from the battery-powered floods in the corners and center of the large room, that the cavernous area with its empty theater-style seating and main-floor desks looked ghostly. The fifty-foot main computer screen with the flashing red light at its base was a reminder just how vulnerable
the complex was without Europa running things.

“How long to reboot the system, Pete?” Niles asked as he walked down the main aisle of seating while looking through the glass walls out into the main hallway. He felt like they were being watched. He knew that was probably a wrong sensory input due to the stress of the situation.

“She should come right up,” Pete said as he practically ran down
the steps to his large desk on the main floor. He immediately checked his personal system and then paused as his security code challenge came up on the monitor. He entered Golding-Hercules—Marilyn 11900-A-1.

“You better not let Jack see the Marilyn part of the code—he’ll kill you.”

“Ah, what the colonel doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Even through the terrifying situation they were now locked
into, Niles Compton had to smile and shake his head. After all of this time he just learned that it had been Pete Golding all along who had programmed Europa’s voice synthesizer to mimic the sex symbol Marilyn Monroe’s voice. Collins had been looking for the culprit from the first day he started at the Group.

“Come on old girl, come on,” Pete urged. “I’m feeling mighty exposed here.”

Suddenly
the main screen flashed a bright white. Then it did it again. Finally it went to a solid blue and the code Pete had entered started flashing at the top minus the numbers in case Pete wasn’t alone. This was a very good indication that Europa was regaining her programming. Golding lowered the microphone on his desktop and leaned in. He swallowed and closed his eyes.

“Europa, are you online?”

Silence filled the giant room. Then: “Good evening Dr. Golding. With my systems down, can you tell me if the emergency on level seventeen has been resolved?”

“We need you to help with that assessment.”