The nurse screamed again, turned and fled.
Alec knew he only had seconds now.
Jerking the bed frame on the left side, he broke that and slipped his left hand free. White had slid down the wall, and sat there in a rude pile, his eyes bleary, his mouth sagging open, sucking air in and out like a leaky bellows. The man might not feel pain, but physical damage nonetheless slowed him down.
From out in the hall, Alec could hear approaching footsteps. Sitting up, ignoring the blood running down his arms in narrow scarlet ribbons, he yanked off the bottom rail of the bed and slid it out, freeing his feet.
White used the wall to prop himself up and get back to his feet, his free hand disappearing inside his jacket, toward his pistol.
Alec leapt from the bed and ran over, blurringly fast, to pummel White with a right, then a left.
The agent hit the wall again and slid back down into his dazed sitting position, his gun clattering to the floor.
Sweeping out with his foot, White caught the backs of Alec’s legs and sent him sprawling, as two more men in black stormed in, guns drawn. They hesitated for a moment, taking in the sight of their fallen leader. Rolling back under the bed, Alec came up and out on the other side, the bed now between him and his thoughtful visitors.
“Kill the bastard!” White bellowed.
The two swung their guns toward Alec, but the X5 was ready for them: he picked up his side of the bed and lifted, the whole thing coming up in front of him like a shield. Barreling forward, he felt bullets punch through the bed and exit, slowed, on either side of him. He heard the pistols’ further reports just as he slammed the thing into the two agents and knocked them to the ground.
White was rising now, but Alec dove, and they reached the pistol at the same instant. As they wrestled for control, the two agents under the bed started moving and Alec heard shouts in the hall.
Only seconds remained.
Head-butting White, Alec knocked the agent senseless, grabbed the gun, and found the cuff keys in White’s jacket pocket. As he spun, the two agents were clawing, climbing out from under the bed, both searching for their lost pistols.
Alec kicked the first one in the head, sending him promptly to dreamland, then spun and caught the second one under the chin with the butt of the pistol. He too went down for a long nap.
Stepping into the hall, Alec saw agents coming from both directions. He fired at both groups — aiming high, wanting to scare and back them off — and they scampered back around the corner, leaving the hall, for the moment, to Alec.
He sprinted to the door to the right of his room, opened it... and saw an empty bed. That made sense — White would keep the room next door vacant for security purposes.
Then he quickly ran to the door on the other side of his, on the left, and ducked inside. White had referred to Joshua being “next door” — Alec hoped that was literally true. The room was dark, the curtains drawn, no one in here but the patient in the bed.
If this wasn’t Joshua’s room, he knew he’d never get his friend out. He could hardly search the building, and would hate to have to abandon the naive dog man.
He looked quickly toward the big figure under the sheet. “Is that you, Joshua?”
“... Is that you, Alec?”
Now, he — they — had a chance.
Sticking his head back out into the hall — still no men in black — Alec fired a couple more rounds in either direction, just to encourage the suckers to keep their distance. Moving to the bed, he uncuffed Joshua’s right hand and gave him the keys.
“You all right?” Alec asked.
“I feel good — why are we in the hospital, Alec?”
“Okay, uncuff yourself, big guy. We gotta go. Ames White and his bozos are after us.”
Scooting back to the door, Alec peeked out. The agents were making their move, hugging the walls and pushing tall stainless steel carts that held the food trays in front of them, as mobile shields.
Alec emptied the clip at them, bullets whanging off metal, and turned back to Joshua. “You ready?”
Joshua jumped off the bed. He too wore only a hospital gown, looking not a little absurd in it. “Let’s blaze.”
“Through the window,” Alec said.
But when Alec went to it, the thing was firmly locked.
“Alec needs to stand back,” Joshua advised.
And, in two steps, Joshua was standing in front of the wall-mounted television. Wrenching the box free, he pitched it, the glass of the window shattering as it flew through, the curtains jerking off the wall and going along for the ride. A few seconds later they heard the TV crash onto the concrete in a glass-shattering explosion.
Joshua looked out the now open window. “We’re up high, Alec.”
“There’s a ledge. Move it! Go!”
Joshua climbed through the broken window, skillfully avoiding the teeth of glass waiting to bite him; soon he was out onto the ledge, and Alec quickly followed.
They were a good six or seven floors up, with a concrete expanse of parking lot beneath them. His back to the building, Alec could see something down in the parking lot, off to his right — a dumpster maybe?
Already sliding along the ledge, Joshua headed toward the window of Alec’s room. Looking in that direction, Alec realized that White had opened the window in hopes they’d come that way.
“No!” Alec yelled.
But it was too late.
As Joshua neared it, Ames White leaned out, pistol in his hand.
Reacting instantly, Joshua grabbed White’s gun arm and pulled. White came flying through the window. He squeezed the trigger, the shot going wild, into the sky. Sunlight off the window blinded Alec for a second. Then he heard White’s yell of rage — not fear — as he fell.
Regaining his vision, Alec looked down to see White sprawled like he was making a snow angel in a dumpster full of garbage bags.
Turning to Joshua, Alec yelled, “Jump!”
“Jump?”
“Now!”
Gunshots exploded from the rooms on either side of them, and they both leapt into the afternoon air.
When they hit, even though the bags were soft, it felt like concrete. It took Alec only a few seconds to gather himself, and as he rose, he caught a whiff of the dumpster — medical waste disposal was pretty casual, in these post-Pulse times — and felt the sudden urge to vomit. From above, he heard no more gunfire — the agents were probably coming down after them — and he knew they had to shake it.
“Joshua!”
His large friend rose from the muck with Ames White tucked under his arm in a headlock.
“We’ve got to go,” Alec said. “Kill him or drop him, I really don’t give a shit.”
Yanking White’s face up by the hair, Joshua thrust his leonine countenance into the agent’s barely conscious, slack features.
“You should die for the things you’ve done,” Joshua said. “But if I kill you, Max says you win — you make us look like monsters. But you’re the monster.”
White’s upper lip curled back in an awful grin. “Freak.”
Joshua punched the agent once, knocking him out.
“Soon,” he said to the slumbering agent. “Soon you’ll pay for Annie.”
“We’ve got to blaze,” Alec urged, “gotta jet,” using the Max idioms that would get Joshua moving his hairy ass.
The two friends in hospital gowns climbed out of the dumpster and took off at a run, their bare feet slapping against the pavement as they went.
Alec knew how much Joshua wanted to destroy White for killing Annie Fisher, Joshua’s one friend among the ordinaries, a blind girl who hadn’t cared what the dog man looked like, and who could “see” past Joshua’s stunted social and intellectual growth to the sensitive, intelligent being just starting to blossom after a lifetime of Manticore abuse.