Backwoods (28 page)

“Let go of me,” she mewled, squirming in his
grasp.

“Tell me what you meant,” he snapped.

“The virus can’t be stopped,” she cried.
“Once it’s inside you in a large enough dose to overwhelm the
immune system, it replicates out of control. The skin growths it
causes, the tumors…they’ll cover their mouths and noses, crush
their lungs from the inside out, stress the heart to the point of
cardiac arrest.”

“You’re saying they’ll die?” Andrew asked.
“What’s happening to them, it’s eventually going to kill them? How
long until that happens?”

“I told you, another week,” Suzette said.
“Maybe a little longer, maybe a little less. But once it’s started,
there’s no way to bring it back into check. It’s like trying to
find the square root of pi. It’s impossible. It never ends.”

Andrew gave her a little shove, sending her
reeling back from him then unslung the M16 from his shoulder.
Grabbing Suzette by the elbow again, he headed for the door,
hauling her in struggling tow.

“What are you doing?” she whined. Her free
hand flapped feebly for the vodka, knocking the bottle off the
table, spilling alcohol all over the floor.

“Taking you with me. You’re going to show me
where Dr. Moore’s lab is.”

“Why?” Suzette tried to dig in her heels and
stop. “It’s not going to do any good. It’s too late. I told
you—there’s no way to stop the virus. There’s nothing you’re going
to find in there that’s going to make any difference.” Even as she
spoke, realization dawned on her, cutting through the thick,
belligerent haze of drunkenness. “But that’s not why you want to
go, is it?”

She jerked mightily against him, pulling
herself free.
“She’s
there, isn’t she? Dani Santoro, that
fat-assed Hispanic bitch. Well, fuck you, Andrew, and fuck her,
too. I’m not helping you do shit. You hear me?”

He reached for her, but she staggered away,
her brows furrowed, her eyes flashing in furious challenge. “Fine,”
he said. “Suit yourself. I don’t have time for this shit.”

Wheeling around, he marched to the door,
throwing it open wide.

“I hope they’ve broken down the door and
taken turns fucking her,” Suzette screeched from behind him. “I
hope they tore her apart and are waiting for you there so they can
rip your sorry ass to shreds right along with her!”

Andrew glanced off his shoulder. “Good bye,
Suzette.”

“
Fuck you!”
she screamed, snatching
the fallen vodka bottle in hand, winging it at his head. He slammed
the door on her, and heard glass shatter on the other side as it
struck.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Following the numbers on the office placards,
Andrew cut to his right shortly past Suzette’s door. To his
amazement, he realized he’d inadvertently come to find his way
along the path Moore had given him, because the fourth door down on
his left was, sure enough, room number one hundred
twenty-seven.

“Dani,” he cried, pounding on the door.
“Dani, it’s me!”

He was so abjectly relieved to see the door
intact, no signs of forced or attempted entry, he nearly burst into
tears. And when he heard her voice, frightened and strained, from
the other side, he laughed out loud.

“Andrew?” she called.

“Dani!” He fell against the door as if
collapsing physically into her arms. “Are you alright?”

“Yes.” Her voice was closer to the door now,
as if she’d come to stand directly on the other side, and like him,
had pressed her cheek to the wood. “Are you? Dr. Moore locked me in
here. He had a gun. He was talking crazy, said you’d done something
to Alice and he was going to find you, make you talk. I thought…oh,
God, I thought he was going to hurt you.”

She’d begun to cry. He could hear her soft,
hitching breaths through the door as she hiccupped against
tears.

“I’m alright,” he said, pressing his palm to
the door.

“I thought he was going to kill you,” she
said. “He had a gun and he…he told me he was going to shoot
you.”

“Dani, I’m alright,” he said again. “Open the
door. Let me in.”

“I can’t,” she whimpered. “He did something
to the door, messed up the code somehow. It’s locked from the
inside. Even before the power went out, I couldn’t get it
open.”

“What?” Andrew drew back from the door now in
dismay. He grabbed the knob, but it was locked from his side, too.
Still, he tugged at it, feeling panic swell inside him again.
Clasping it in both hands, he twisted furiously, until the entire
door shook in its frame.

“Andrew, I’m scared,” Dani said. “Get me out
of here. Please get me out.”

“I will,” he promised. “Stand back. Let me
try something.”

The hall was narrow, but still allowed him
enough space for leverage. He backed up to the far side, then
charged forward, ramming his shoulder into the door, hoping he
could force it open. All he managed to do was knock himself
backwards in the recoil, his shoulder aching and nearly bludgeoned
out of its socket.

“Damn it,” he said, then tried again. Over
and over, he backpedaled in the corridor, then lunged forward
again, slamming into the door once, twice, three times, all with no
effect whatsoever.

“Damn it!” he shouted, grasping the knob
again, shoving his shoulder forcibly against the wood as he tried
to shake it loose. From the other side, he could hear Dani trying,
too, grabbing the knob and jerking with him. “Damn it, damn it,
goddamn it!”

He shoved his hands through his hair, uttered
a hoarse, frustrated cry, then kicked the door. “Goddamn it,” he
yelled.

“Wait a minute,” Dani said. “I can take the
door off the hinges.” She uttered a quick, strained laugh. “Why
didn’t I think of it before? I can take the door off its hinges.
I’ve got a screwdriver on my multitool, a knife I can use to wedge
under the main pin. I can…”

She’d sounded so excited, he’d felt it, too;
he’d gone back to the door, laughing along with her, forgetting
about his frustration, his own futile attempts, until her voice
abruptly faded from the other side.

“What?” he asked, his own smile faltering
uncertainly. “Dani? What’s wrong?”

She laughed again, but it fell flat, a
humorless sound. “It’s on my keychain,” she said. “My little
multitool. It’s on my goddamn keychain.”

He realized.
Which is in my
pocket.

“Shit,” he said. “Wait. I can slide it under
the door.” Pulling it out, he dropped to his hands and knees,
setting the flashlight down to aim the beam beneath the bottom of
the door. “Do you see my light?”

Within that equally narrow, illuminated
space, he suddenly saw a sliver of her face come into view, her eye
and cheek, the side of her nose. It was enough to make him smile.
“Hey, you.”

She managed a miserable laugh. “Hey,
yourself.”

“Here.” He tried to slide the Gerber Clutch
under the door, but it wouldn’t fit. The tool case was too wide.
With a frown and a grunt, Andrew turned it lengthwise, then tried
forcing it, shoving it repeatedly, uselessly. “Goddamn it,” he
snapped, frustrated, frightened, hurling the keychain down the
corridor, sending it skittering and clattering into the
darkness.

“I’m sorry, Andrew,” Dani whispered.

He looked back into her eye, saw it
glistening with tears, then wedged his fingertips under the door,
brushing against hers. “I’m going to get you out,” he promised.

From the far end of the corridor, back in the
direction he had come, came a sudden, terrified shriek. Andrew
jerked at the sound, eyes flown wide as his head snapped up, his
eyes darting in that direction.

Suzette,
he thought, as another
piteous scream, shrill and agonized, ripped through the lab
building.
Oh, Jesus, that was Suzette!

“Andrew,” Dani cried. “Oh, God, what’s that?
What’s going on out there?”

“Nothing,” he told her, peering under the
door again, meeting her panic-stricken gaze. “It was nothing.”

I have to get her out of there,
he
thought, scrambling to his feet. He’d shrugged the M16 over his
shoulder, but took it in hand now, raising it over his head. With a
desperate cry, he rammed the stock down into the key pad beside the
door, hoping against hope that this would somehow disable the
locking mechanism in the door. He hit it again, then again. With
the fourth blow, he managed to knock the key pad casing loose and
it listed severely to port, revealing a tangled mess of
multicolored wires beneath. Another shout, another blow, and the
case clattered to the floor, leaving the inner workings of the key
pad vulnerably exposed.

Still, the door remained locked. Another
shriek echoed down the hallway, but this time it wasn’t Suzette.
The sound was visceral, scraping and shrill, something brutal and
primal, the triumphant howl of a wolf pack’s alpha male claiming
first dibs on a kill.

“Andrew, you have to go,” Dani pleaded
through the door. If Suzette had been able to hear the gun blasts
as Barron, Spaulding and the other soldiers had tried to fight off
the screamers, then Dani likely had, too. She may not have
understood fully what was going on, but she’d been able to deduce
enough to recognize the peril.

“Not without you,” he replied, gritting his
teeth, turning the battering ram of his rifle’s butt against the
door knob now.

“Andrew, please,” she cried. “I don’t know
what’s going on out there, but people are screaming. Something’s
wrong, there’s something very, very wrong, and you have to get out
of here!”

“I’m not leaving without you,” he said again.
Backing up, he leaned down, grabbed his flashlight again. Propping
it beneath his arm, he clasped the rifle between his hands. “Stand
back,” he called to her. Then as a second thought, he added, “Way
back. Get underneath Moore’s desk. I’m going to try and shoot out
the lock.”

“Andrew,” she protested.

“Just do it,” he cried. “I’m not leaving
without you. I’m going to get you out of that goddamn office and
out of these godforsaken backwoods, and I’m going to personally
drive you all of the way back to the Bronx so you can see your kids
again, do you hear me? Then we’re all going to go to North Pole,
Alaska so I can introduce you to my mom and tell her she was right,
that everything happens for a reason because
you’re my reason,
Dani Santoro,
whether you like it or not, now just shut the
hell up and stand back so I can shoot this goddamn door!”

And with that, bracing himself, readying for
the thunderous report as it fired, he squeezed the trigger. Then
blinked, bewildered, at the hollow
click
that followed.

“What the hell?” He frowned, cocking the gun
to get a better look at it, trying to figure out what he was doing
wrong.

“What is it?” he heard Dani say.

“I’ve got an assault rifle,” he called back.
“It won’t shoot.”

She said something, but he couldn’t
understand. Moving back to the door, putting his ear to it again,
he called, “What?”

“Turn the safety off,” she said again.
“There’s a switch on the side panel. Turn it to
semi.”

He tilted the gun again, spied the little
toggle she’d mentioned, then did as instructed. “Okay. Now
what?”

“Is your bolt open?”

Another glance at the gun. “How can you
tell?”

“It’s a slide bolt on the top of the gun. Is
it pulled back?”

“Uh. No.”

“Then you’ve got a round chambered in there
already. You’re ready to shoot.”

“Okay. Got it.” He backed away from the door
again, raising the rifle. “Stand back. I’m going to try again.”

This time, when he squeezed the trigger, a
loud series of rapid-fire shots blasted out. The rounds ripped into
the doorframe, door and neighboring wall, pulverizing the drywall,
punching through the metal door, clanging noisily off the chrome
knob and lock plates.

“Jesus!” he yelled, because the gun had a
mind of its own, and even though he’d gripped it tightly, the shots
went wild, a meandering semi-circle arcing wildly toward the
ceiling.

When he’d stopped shooting, he stood there
stupidly, listening to the soft patter of drywall dust peppering
the floor, watching it dissipate in the air in a thin haze.

“Holy shit,” he said as the door to Moore’s
office slowly swung inward, then listed on its bullet-ridden hinges
and crashed to the floor. He could see Moore’s desk inside through
a lingering haze of gun smoke and shattered plaster dust.

Dani slowly raised her head from behind the
desk, eyes wide. “I said switch it to
semi,
not
burst.”

Sheepish, he let the gun fall from his hands,
clattering to the floor. “Sorry.”

“Don’t do that again,” she said, then
scrambled out and rushed across the room, stumbling over the fallen
door. With a gasp and a cry, she flung her arms around his neck and
fell against him.

He allowed himself the luxury of holding her
for a long, lingering moment. “Come on,” he whispered through the
tangled mess of her hair and into her ear. “Let’s get the hell out
of here.”

She nodded. “Sounds good.” As they drew
apart, she caught him by the hand, cutting a glance down at the
M16. “But I think I’d better handle the rifle from here on
out.”

“Yeah.” He nodded as she hefted it in hand,
snapping the safety back on. “That sounds good, too.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The hallway leading to Moore’s office stopped
at a dead end.
Which means we’ve got to go back the way I
came,
Andrew thought.
Back toward the office where Suzette
was hiding. Where we heard her screams coming from.

Shit.

“Stay behind me,” he whispered to Dani once
they reached the mouth of the hall, the juncture from which he
could look to his left and see Suzette’s door, half-ajar and
plainly in view. He had snapped off the flashlight before reaching
this point and stayed in the relative shelter of the wall for a
long moment, unmoving.