He’d dropped the Zippo, but true to design, the flame had remained lit as it had fallen into some of the blankets from Suzette’s nest. These had started to smolder, sending more smoke into the air, with small flames beginning to lick at the fabric in widening tongues.
Andrew shoved against the broom handle, turning it loose as the screamer tripped over Suzette’s corpse. It floundered for a moment, its bulging eyes seeming all the more wide with surprise, then fell against the burning blankets. With a startled howl, it scrambled upright, its deformed arms and legs getting tangled in the smoldering folds. It flapped its arms, danced a mad jig and screeched as it tried to shrug its way free.
“Six,” the overhead voice droned. “Five, four.”
The mangrove-looking screamer—Curly, as seemed fairly apt—plowed into Andrew like a runaway bull, knocking him off his feet, pinning him to the ground as they landed together. Andrew reached up, but rather than grabbing it in a chokehold, felt his fingers sink between the pulsating shafts of its veins. With a disgusted yell, he clawed at them, seizing fistfuls and yanking, feeling the rubbery tissue squelch and yield beneath his fingers. Blood spurted as he ripped them open, spraying his face. As quickly as he could rip open the veins and arteries, he watched new ones grew whip and twine upward to take their place.
“Three, two,” said the automaton. “One. Fire suppression engaged.”
A claxon sounded, sharp and shrill, and then, from overhead nozzles, a thick spray of highly pressured carbon dioxide vapor suddenly plunged down. Immediately, the room was engulfed in a dense fog. Andrew managed one deep gulp for breath before it washed over him, obscuring even the screamer straddling him from view. Clamping his lips together, he held his breath.
There was no amount of regeneration in the world that could allow an organism to breathe without oxygen and in less than five seconds, the heavy blanket of gas had completely displaced all of it in the room. The screamer fell away from Andrew and he could see it if he squinted. It writhed on the floor beside him, pawing at its throat as it suffocated. Once it was off of him, Andrew acted fast, scrambling to his feet, rubbing furiously at his eyes to get the sting of blood out of them. Hands outstretched, he floundered toward the doorway until he hit the wall, and from there, he patted and pawed until he found the blue metal box mounted just inside the threshold.
It’s oxygen, Alice had told him. Little portable tanks, a mask. They’re in all the rooms. Daddy said it’s an ocean standard.
He found two cans inside, each smaller around than a beer can, but each affixed with a clear rubber face mask at the end of the tapered nozzle, with a little plastic handle for administering the flow of oxygen from can to mask. Yanking them loose, he shoved one against his mouth and nose, then depressed the trigger. He heard a soft hiss and took a breath.
How long before you smother? he thought, panicked. He spun around and stumbled forward, tucking the second canister protectively beneath his arm. He didn’t know how much oxygen one of the little cans contained. Judging by the size, he suspected not much. They’d been designed to provide enough oxygen for the wearer to get out of the building, not for any long-term survival.
The carbon dioxide nozzles had stopped spraying, and the hazy cloud began to dissipate. He could see the silhouettes of screamers sprawled on the floor, still scrabbling weakly with their deformed limbs, uttering horrible, sodden, gagging sounds. When he found Dani, he fell to his knees. Taking only intermittent breaths from his mask, then laying the can aside, he tore at the overlapping tendrils of Langley’s intestines, which he’d used to bind her in a gruesome, mummy-like fashion, nearly to her hairline. Andrew ripped them back from her face enough to find her mouth and nose, then pressed the oxygen mask against her, depressing the plastic trigger. It took two hits from the canister before her eyelids fluttered, then flew open wide. He heard her muffled cry against the rubber mask and shook his head at her.
It’s all right, he tried to convey, leaving the mask on her face. She was disoriented, though, frightened and confused, and struggled briefly with him, trying to push him away, slapping at him in a frantic frenzy. After a moment, realization dawned on her, along with recognition, and her struggles ceased. She uttered a stifled cry then sat up, shrugging and thrashing to work her hands loose from Langley’s guts.
Working together, they managed to wrestle her free. Leaning heavily against him, she stumbled to her feet, both of them keeping their oxygen masks over their mouths and noses. Andrew nodded to indicate the doorway, and she nodded once in affirmation. He kept a steadying arm around her as they limped together toward the door. One of the screamers—Larry, it looked like, to judge by its massive, misshapen hands—pawed weakly for them as they passed, and with a muffled cry, Dani danced sideways to avoid it. It didn’t move again, but they passed it quickly nonetheless, giving the rest of them as wide a berth as possible in their bid to escape.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
By nothing short of a miracle, they managed to make their way back to the main entrance of the laboratory, and staggered together out into the night, the darkened expanse of the courtyard. Only then were they able to cast aside their oxygen masks, and both Andrew and Dani collapsed to their hands and knees, side by side in the grass, dragging in deep, whooping mouthfuls of air. It was cold outside, the pervasive chill made even worse considering their clothes were soaked with blood.
Blood and God only knows what else, Andrew thought, sitting up, grimacing as he drew the tacky, soggy front of his T-shirt back, then let it slap against his skin again.
“I couldn’t shoot,” Dani whispered, her voice strained. “Andrew, I…I’m sorry. I couldn’t shoot. I just kept seeing them in my mind, the way they were.” She blinked at him, her eyes enormous, childlike and fearful, her face streaked with gore, her hair sopping with it, clinging to her scalp and framing her face in messy tangles. “I knew them. All of them except Langley…they were my friends.”
“It’s alright.” Hooking an arm around her neck, he drew her against his shoulder. She trembled in his embrace and he kissed her brow, grime and gore be damned. “Everything’s going to be alright now, Dani.”
“What happened back there?” she asked with a timid glance over his shoulder at the lab.
“Inert gas fire suppression,” he said. “Carbon dioxide. It’s heavier than oxygen, so it displaces it, puts any fires out.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I mean, what happened to them? To Langley and the others…to Alpha squad.”
He tried to explain, even though he felt fairly certain her understanding of bioengineering would as limited as his own.
“Dr. Moore did that to them? On purpose?” She began to rock back and forth against him, clearly in shock. “ Oh, God. Oh, my God.”
“It’s alright,” he soothed again, stroking his hand against her hair. “Come on. We’re wet and it’s cold. We need to get one of the trucks and get out of here.” He told her about Moore and Alice’s escape, and what Moore had told him about the roads leading to and from the compound.
“They’ve been clear the whole time?” Dani asked. “But why would Major Prendick lie about that? Why would he want us to think we couldn’t leave?”
“I don’t know.” Andrew shook his head.
They stood together and, huddled against the chill, made their way across the courtyard toward the parking lot and garage. “What happened to Langley,” Dani said. “That’s what was happening to Thomas, wasn’t it?” Her eyes had grown tearful at the mention of her friend and when Andrew nodded, she uttered a soft, pained gasp. “They did that to them, Prendick and Moore. They meant to do that to all of us.”