They didn’t have the same deep red of human hemoglobin.
He squeezed his guns tightly. His companions.
Where the hell was the data center? So far he just saw rooms with echoes of whatever mayhem had taken place here.
Finally, at the end of the corridor, he came to a room without any glass. Two heavy doors lay flat in the hallway.
Something wanted in, and had ripped them off.
He looked into the room. Without electricity, it was dark. But there were two high, narrow openings, the glass shattered long ago, sending in thin shafts of light.
It would have to be enough.
He had a moment’s hesitation at the entrance. The sounds seemed to have faded.
Rats, he thought. Mice.
Except he imagined that the rats and mice of this world were long gone.
He walked into the room anyway.
Raine ran his hand along the flat metal face of the hospital computer. Kvasir had shown him which section held the hard drive. And as he touched the metal, he felt indentations in the panel.
Someone had tried smashing into this metal wall, denting it but unable to get inside.
If it had been mutants, they probably wondered what might be inside that they could eat or use as a weapon. If it had been humans, maybe their thinking was that the stuff inside would be of use in trading. No matter who, they had moved on, never getting at the guts of the computer.
He came to the third section of the machine’s casing, his hand still sliding over more indentations.
Then he crouched down.
Shit-hardly any light at all. At the bottom, the front face of the panel ended in a lip. And below that lip, three different holes with a hexagonal shape.
He put down both his guns and dug out the screwdriver from the pack.
Raine worked it into one hole-not a perfect fit, but tight enough so he could wedge the iron into the hexagonal hole, twist it to the left, and then begin to loosen the bolts holding the bottom of the panel.
He worked on each bolt.
And when the last one came loose, the metal panel popped open a few inches from the bottom.
More bolts probably on the top. But now, with that opening at the bottom, he could use the tire iron as a wedge. He slid it into the open bottom, and began to pry the metal panel open.
He kept prying it until he could slide his arm in and up.
The interior felt pristine.
Undamaged.
He felt along inside, running his fingers over the wires and chips that made up the machine’s brain.
He felt for the hard drive-a flat, book-sized rectangle, Kvasir had said. One of many backups and redundancies.
His arm buried awkwardly in the thing, Raine weighed getting something to stand on so he could get up to undo the other bolts on top.
Just get the damn thing open.
But then he felt it. Smooth. Firmly planted in a rectangular bay.
The drive. Had to be.
All the data from whatever they did here. Whatever the hell the Authority had been doing with the mutants.
He grabbed it, his fingers barely able to close around the shape, because of the bad angle. He was hurrying. He told himself to slow down.
He pulled on the drive. Nothing.
And he didn’t want to pull so hard that it snapped. Or popped out so fast that it flew up and out of his hand, smashing to the floor. Useless.
He gave it another controlled pull up, measuring the amount of strength he used.
And then he felt movement. He adjusted the pull, and the drive popped free.
Now, like removing a living creature, something being born from its mother, he withdrew his hand.
He had it. For a second he looked at the prize.
His gift to the Resistance. His ticket, too. Maybe.
Now to get out and away.
But in those seconds of looking at the drive, at the thin black brick in the shadows of the room… Raine heard the noises again.
Louder now. On this floor. Steps.
Mice, he thought. Nice try, Raine.
Something was stumbling over debris. The sound of shattered glass being stepped on.
Not too much stealth going on.
He was deep in this hospital from hell-and he was trapped.
He put the drive, the screwdriver, and tire iron into his backpack, slipped the pack on, and picked up his rifles.
There was no point waiting here for them to arrive.
Time to see what’s still alive in this “dead” city.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Raine got to the doorway to see exactly what was coming.
At both ends of the corridor was a line of shadowy figures, outlined enough so Raine could see the way they walked.
The stumbling gait.
He thought he even saw a few down on all fours. Crawling?
Haven’t seen that before…
A result of the Authority’s work here?
As soon as he stepped into the hallway, the mutants started making their barking noises, some sending out high-pitched screeches.
He wasted no time taking both guns in one hand and reaching into his pack for one of the grenades. Antiques. Handmade grenades. Would they even work?
He pulled a clip on one, tossed it to the line of mutants to his left, and then quickly grabbed another. After wedging the second grenade under his arm to get the pin out, he sent that one down to the right end of the corridor.
The blasts went off within seconds of each other, cacophonous in the closed hallway.
The mutants responded with screams and shrieks. If this place had been bedlam when the Authority was doing its experiments, well… bedlam had returned.
Now what? he wondered.
He had three more grenades.
It took seconds for him to see that they had done little damage. A scattering of dead and mutilated muties at either end, while a seemingly endless supply of mutants crawled over the bodies.
Raine started to think of other possibilities. One thing was clear: standing here was pointless.
He started moving left, since ultimately that was the direction of the hospital exit and his buggy.
Light-years away.
As he did, the smoke from the explosion faded, and now the horde of mutants, their heads tilted like a line of attacking bears, all holding things to smash, cut, or chop him up… kept coming.
He grabbed another grenade and sent it flying ahead, then tossed another back behind him as far as it could go.
One grenade left…
He passed a room on the left. No windows. A box to die in.
Move on.
He was getting closer to the mutants at that end, an insane move, he knew, but he had no other choice.
He now started firing his rifles, holding both at his sides. The automatic rifle sent out a spray of bullets. Moving, shooting, but without taking the time to aim at the dozens of them… his shots didn’t do much.
The damned mutants could take hits.
The shotgun was a bit better, hard for even them to move with a basketball-sized crater in their torsos. But after two shots it was useless. No time to reload it. He stuck the shotgun through the strap of his backpack, barrel down.
He passed another room on the right.
He stopped. A patients’ room. It had a barred window.
Third floor.
What was the building’s facade like? he wondered.
If he went in there, he knew one thing-he wouldn’t ever come out the way he went in.
Not in one piece.
He raised his automatic and started taking aim. He brought down a few of the mutants in front.
Give the others something to climb over.
He spun around to the other end. They were getting close, too, racing their monster brothers to see which would get to him first.
Raine could feel his own heart racing, adrenaline pumping, but also fighting an insane anxiety that screamed at him: