They reached the front door and silently drew weapons, checking them, tensely impatient for David to give the signal. Karen, always so cool and collected in times of stress, had a shocked vagueness about her, like she'd just been kicked in the gut and hadn't yet managed to take a breath. It was the same look that John had seen time and again on the faces of disaster Survivors – the haunted disbelief in the eyes, the slack and terrible blankness of expression that spoke of a yawning emptiness deep inside. It hurt him to see her like that, hurt him and made him even angrier. Karen Driver wasn't supposed to look like that. "I lead, John in back, straight line," David said softly. John saw that he looked almost as freaked as Karen, though in a different way. It was guilt gnawing at their captain, he could see it in his reluctant gaze, the tight set of his mouth. John wished he could tell him that blaming himself was wrong, but there wasn't time and he didn't have the right words for it. David would have to take care of himself, just as they all would.
"Ready? Go."
David pushed the door open and then they were slipping through, back into the gentle hiss of waves and the pale blue light of the moon. David, then Karen, Steve, Rebecca, and finally John, crouched and running across the packed dirt of the open compound. There was darkness and the scent of pine, of salt, but John's soldier mind wasn't telling him anything he didn't already know as they pounded through the shadows. There was only anger, and fear for Karen……making the sudden blast of M-16 fire a total surprise.
Shit!
John dove for the ground as the thundering rattle opened up to their right, saw that they were just over halfway to block E as he rolled and started to fire. Then the air was filled with the blast of nine-millime– ter rounds, crashing over the steady pulse of automat– ic rifles.
Can't see, can't target…
He found the muzzle flashes at three o'clock and jerked the Beretta around, squeezing the trigger six, seven, eight times. The stutter of orange-white light blocked the shooters from view but he saw one of the flashes disappear, heard the clatter decrease and a rage overtook him, not the "soldier mind" but a blinding, screaming fury at the diseased attack– ers that far exceeded any he'd ever known. They wanted Karen to die, those numb, brainless night– mares wanted to stop them from saving her.
Not Karen. NOT KAREN.
A strange, feral howl beat at his ears as he pushed away from the dusty earth and then he was standing, running, firing. Only when he heard the shouts of the others, the Berettas except for his holding fire, did he realize that the howl was coming from him. John ran forward, screaming as he fired again and again at the things that meant to slow them up, to kill them, to claim Karen as one of their own. His thoughts were no longer words, just an endless, form– less negative – a denial of their existence and what had created them. He charged ahead, not seeing that they had stopped firing, that they were falling, that the shadows had fallen silent except for the thunder of his semi and the scream that poured from his shaking body. Then he was standing over them and the Beretta had stopped crashing and jumping, even though he still pulled the trigger. Three of them, white where there was no red, decayed flesh bursts covering their pitiful, wasted forms. Click. Click. Click. One of them had a face that was a mass of puckered scar tissue, twisting white risers of gnarled skin except for where a fresh, bloody hole had punched through its forehead. Another, one eye spattered against its withered cheek, pooling viscous fluid in the rotting cup of its ear. Click. Click. The third was still alive. Half of its throat was gone, tattered to pulp, and its mouth opened and closed soundlessly, opened and closed, its filmed dark eyes blinking slowly up at him. Click. He was dry-firing, the scream dying away in his ragged throat. It was the sound of the hammer falling uselessly against hot metal that finally released him from the rage – that, and the slow, helpless blink of the wretched thing at his feet.
It didn't know what it was. It didn't know who they
were. Once it had been a man, and now it was rotting
garbage with a gun and a mission it couldn't possibly
understand.
They took his soul…
"John?"
A warm hand on his back, Karen's voice low and easy next to him. Steve and David stepped into view, staring down at the gaping, blinking shell of humanity in the shaded moonlight, the last remnant of an experiment in madness. "Yeah," he whispered. "Yeah, I'm here." David trained his Beretta on the monster's skull and spoke softly. "Stand back." John turned away, started walking back for their last destination with Karen at his side, Rebecca's slight form in front of him. The shot was incredibly loud, a booming crack that seemed to shake the ground beneath their feet.
Not Karen, oh please not one of us. That's no way to go out, no way to die…
Then David and Steve were with them and without speaking, they broke into a jog for block E, moving quickly through the emptiness that had claimed the night. The Trisquads were no more, but the disease that made them might even now be coursing through Karen's body, turning her into a creature with no mind, no soul, doomed to a fate worse than death. John picked up speed, silently swearing to himself that if they found this Dr. Griffith, he was going to be awfully goddamned sorry that they did.
THIRTEEN
The e block was no different than the first four they'd encountered, as bland and industrial and stale as the rest of them, a study in concrete efficiency. They moved quickly through the stuffy halls, turning on lights as they went, searching for the room that held the final clue to Dr. Ammon's secret. It didn't take long; almost half of the structure was taken up by an indoor shooting range, where David had found boxes of loaded M-16 mags, but no rifles to go with them. John had asked if he should retrieve the Trisquad's weapons, which Rebecca promptly vetoed. The rifles were hot, probably crawling with virus. Like Karen's blood by now, streams of replicating virions bursting from cells, searching for new cells to attach to and use and destroy… "Here!" Steve called from farther down the wind– ing corridor, and Rebecca hurried toward him, Karen and John not far behind. David was already standing with Steve by the closed door, the red, green, and blue triangles a sign that they'd hit on the right room. Steve's gaze seemed to seek her out, but was blank of all emotion except worry. She didn't mind, noted it only absently. Karen's infection, John's insane run at the Trisquad – there wasn't room in her for anything but the need to find the lab, to find help for Karen. Steve opened the door and they filed inside, Rebecca continuing to watch Karen closely for signs that the virus had progressed and wondering what she should do with the information she'd picked up so far about the amplification time. She didn't really have any doubts that Karen had been exposed, and knew that no one else did, either, but what should she say?
Do I tell her that it might only take hours? Do I pull David aside? If there's a cure, she has to get it before the damage is too great, before it starts to fry her brain – before it dumps so much dopamine into her that she stops being Karen Driver and becomes… something else.
Rebecca didn't know how to handle it. They were already doing all that they could, as fast as they could, and she didn't know enough about the T-Virus to assume anything. She also didn't want to see Karen any more terrified than she was already. The woman was doing her best to control it, but it was obvious that she was on the edge of a breakdown, from the desperation in her bloodred eyes to the growing tremor of her hands. And the Trisquads had almost certainly been injected with much larger amounts than Karen had been exposed to; maybe she had days…
…first symptoms in less than an hour?Don't kid yourself. You have to tell her, to warn her and everyone else of what could happen. Soon.
She pushed the thought aside almost frantically, looking around at the room they'd entered. It was smaller than the test chambers they'd come across, and emptier. There was a long meeting table pushed to the back, a half dozen chairs behind it. In the front of the room was a small shelf coming off the wall, only a few feet long and a foot deep. There were three large buttons on the flat surface, red, green, and blue. The wall behind the shelf was tiled in large, smooth gray tiles made from some kind of industrial plastic. "That's it," Steve said. "Blue to access." With barely a second's hesitation, David walked to the counter and pushed the blue button. A woman's voice spoke coolly from a hidden speaker above, startling them. It was a recording, the bland tone eerily reminding Rebecca of the final moments at the Spencer estate, the triggering system tape.