Fury: Book One of the Cure (Omnibus Edition) (23 page)

“There’s heavy security at the facility,” Anthony warns.

“That’s why the three of us are going to be armed,” I reply.

“With what?”

I reach over to the backpack I stashed in the four-wheel drive this morning. Inside are two six-inch knives, a tear gas grenade and four guns. Two of the guns go straight into my shoulder holster, sitting snugly against my ribs. I slide the knives into my boots and pass the other two guns to the men in the front. They stare in disbelief at the weapons.

“What the hell is this?” Anthony asks.

“It’s a semi-automatic weapon and you’re going to use it to defend yourself.”

“I don’t know how!” he protests in a voice several octaves higher than usual.

“Aim and pull the trigger,” I snap. One glance at his face tells me he’s starting to panic, so I talk to him in a warm tone, knowing it will help relax him, regardless of what I’m saying. “A semi-automatic weapon doesn’t need to be manually chambered for each round, but you have to pull the trigger every time you want to fire—fully automatic is when you just hold your finger down and go nuts, and a weapon like a rifle needs a round loaded every time you fire a shot. Pulling the trigger in this causes the hammer and firing pin to strike and fire the cartridge. A bolt then recoils to extract and load a new cartridge from the magazine, making it ready to fire again. Each magazine for these guns contains ten rounds, so once you’ve used them all you have to change the magazine by pushing this in …” as I speak, I press the release button and catch the clip as it falls out. “Then you take the new one and you jam it up in there, nice and hard until you hear it click. Keep the safety on until you need to shoot it. And when you fire bring it up to your eye level and hold it with both hands. Take a deep breath before you pull the trigger ’cause it’ll help your aim. It’s a small enough weapon that it won’t kick, so you should be right just by holding it firm.”

I probably should have waited until he’d pulled over, because Anthony is perilously close to hitting another car, so intent on the gun is he. I remember perfectly the first time I held the cool steel in my hands and felt the weight of a weapon like this one. There’s something seductive and addictive about it, and I’ve seen a lot of men and women overcome by the illusion of power in a gun. There’s nothing glamorous about something that can kill with the flick of a finger though. To be honest I think it’s lazy.

“What kind is this?” Anthony asks, glancing at the gun sitting on his lap.

“That’s a Smith & Wesson police pistol—an old one. But don’t worry, I keep it nice and clean so it won’t blow your head off. Benny boy, you’ve got a Beretta 3032 Tomcat.”

“What about you?”

“I’m a Glock man. This is an Austrian nine-millimeter semi-compact model, and the other one’s a basic 17.” I holster the two guns again and hand out the extra magazines. Slumping back in my seat, I look down at Josi again, smoothing her dark hair off her forehead. Her eyelids are flickering as if she’s having a dream. The odds of it being a good one are slim, but I hope so for her sake anyway. She smells like she always does, and it hits me with a powerful wave of melancholy. I feel perverse and sleazy as I lean down to kiss her gently on the lips. It might be the last time I ever get to do it, even if by some miracle we all survive this day.

*

Anthony pulls into the hospital, which is now oddly quiet. “You two carry Josi between you and I’ll cover you,” I order. They help me get her out of the car.

“The back entrance will be quieter,” Anthony says, so we follow him around to a deserted loading bay. He puts his fingers to the scanner to open the bay. “My prints have been blocked,” he sighs.

I was expecting as much. My prints would undoubtedly get us in, but there’s only one reason they’ve been left activated since my operative status was changed to ‘rogue’, and that’s so I can be tracked. Cars and smaller scanners aren’t connected into the Blood hub, but a facility like this may be. When I dropped Josi here last year I was sure it was one of the last non-government facilities in the country, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely safe.

“What’s your alarm system like here?”

“I don’t know, it’s never gone off,” Anthony replies.

I remove my gun from its holster. Instead of aiming it at the lock on the door—a bullet will just ricochet straight off and probably land in my face—I move to the large steel roller door and shoot through the chain at the top of it. Now there’s nothing to hold the pressure of the spring-loaded roller system down except the small metal locking device at the bottom. Grabbing one of the knives from my boot, I lie down on the ground to get a good enough angle, and then I set about jimmying the tiny screws loose. Once they’re out, it’s simple enough to remove the locking device and the door springs up to the roof with a loud screech of rusty metal. Clearly, this is not a facility that has much money.

“Wow,” Anthony says. He’s obviously not seen much in his life if something as simple as opening a door impresses him. Poor guy.

“The noise will have notified everyone in the whole damn place, so we better hurry.”

Ben’s having trouble supporting Josi, so I take her weight from him and give the old guy a quick pat on the back. “Thanks, man. I’ve got her now. Just stay behind me.”

Anthony directs us through the asylum. I don’t bother to inform him that I’ve studied a floor plan, and could probably make my way around quicker than he could. Instead I keep my eyes peeled on every doorway and every corner, waiting for the first glimpse that it’s all about to fall apart. It will come, sooner or later. Someone will see us and sound an alarm, and then it won’t be long before the Bloods are here. We just have to secure ourselves somewhere before that happens.

A young male nurse rounds a corner in front of us and stops dead. He clocks Anthony holding the prostrate form of Josi. I’m about two seconds away from knocking him out when he says, “Doctor Harwood?”

“Jamie,” Anthony says quickly. “Good boy. I have a patient who collapsed outside. Could you run and get a gurney for her?”

Jamie nods, about to dash off when he spots the gun in my hand. He stops, mouth falling open. “What’s that? I mean, why—”

I sigh. “Take her weight,” I order Anthony, then I step forward and knock Jamie’s head against the wall. It’s barely more than a light tap, but it’s in the right spot, so he dozes off pretty quick.

“Luke!” Anthony protests.

“I know,” I agree. “A gurney would have been great.”

Another few feet along the hallway three men in lab coats emerge from a room. They spot us.

“What the—Anthony, why are you …?”

“Call security,” one of them orders coldly. “Harwood’s under Blood watch.”

Shit. I was hoping they’d yet to work out Anthony’s involvement. “Run,” I say crisply. As Ben hobbles past with his satchel and poor Anthony hauls Josi on his own, I take a few moments to bundle the three doctors back into the room they’d come from, locking it behind them. Their protests are dull and not particularly forceful—they just toddle into the room and start talking about a golf game. Damn drones.

Security starts streaming toward us, guns raised.

There’s a secret few people know: certain security guards and police officers are given a slightly altered version of the cure. It allows them to act without quite as many of the irrational mood swings and sharpens their brains to react with more savagery. It’s not anger—it’s a survival instinct, the same part of the brain that we Bloods are trained to switch on and off whenever we need to. The amygdala gives only a fight response, with no option for flight.

All of this has never really concerned me much before—I couldn’t give a shit who has what weird alterations in their heads. But right now I understand the danger: these men will keep fighting me until they die, not because they care, but because their nut-job brains are flooding them with bravado. I suppose it must be a bit like being on cocaine.

“Left!” I tell Ben and Anthony and they veer down a corridor away from the security guards. It won’t take long before the guards have flooded every hallway in this place. I pause at the corner and fire a few quick shots into the fray. I aim only for legs, shoulders and arms, taking down a couple of guards and deterring the rest for a few minutes.

Ben’s having trouble breathing so I take his bag from him. The absurdity of doing this with an old asthmatic and a terrified, scrawny shrink instead of my usual team almost makes me laugh.

“Keep going, old man,” I tell Ben gently. “You can do it.”

“I’m not old, you little shit,” he mutters, picking up the pace. I grin.

“You okay, Doc?”

Anthony nods, his face bright red. His footsteps grow more and more dogged with every breath. If I carry Josi I won’t be able to shoot at the same time, so he’s gonna have to tough it out.

“It’s not much further,” I reassure them, firing behind us a few times to deter the guards from sneaking around the corner.

We make it through a few more hallways and find ourselves faced with a flight of stairs.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Anthony gasps. “There’s an elevator right there!”

“An elevator’s too dangerous. They can just wait at the other end for us. I’ll take her for the climb, but get your gun out and concentrate.”

Anthony’s legs are jelly when he passes Josi over to me. He looks like a newborn foal as he tries to climb the stairs, trembling gun waving wildly. Jesus, he’s going to wind up shooting one of us by mistake.

Josephine is over my shoulder—unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of looking after her head anymore—if she has a neck injury, then we’re screwed and there’s nothing I can do about it. With my other arm I support Ben up the stairs—I have a real fear that he’s about to have a heart attack and drop dead.

The door to the stairwell opens a few floors below us and suddenly there are two guards racing up. “Doc, shoot them!” I order.

Anthony whimpers, but shoves the gun over the railing and starts firing erratically. There’s no chance of him hitting them, but it at least gets them to dive out of the way. We move faster until the door just above us opens and two more men appear. I let go of Ben, draw my left gun and shoot the first man in the chest. He falls straight down on top of Anthony, who crumples under his weight. Swearing under my breath, I lower Josi to the ground, placing her awkwardly on the stairs, and then I launch myself up to where the second man is trying to whack the Doc with his baton.

Holstering my gun, I punch the baton out of the man’s hand, then grab him by the neck and throw him over the railing. He hits the ground with an ugly sound. I hoist Anthony out of the tangle of the other dead man, setting him straight and pushing him up to the exit. Then I shoot the two men who are still following behind, taking a bullet through a fine layer of skin on my arm. Once they’re dead, I help Ben over the bodies, then lift Josi back over my shoulder and emerge out of the nightmarish stairwell.

The room I’ve been aiming for is in sight at the end of the hallway. It’s a hospital-style nurse’s station, but what’s great about it is that it works as a panic room. It can be locked off from the outside, with no access at all. Within this sealed-off area is an even smaller patient room with glass walls, and this can also be sealed in case a contamination were to arise. It was also probably designed like that because they have a bunch of psychotic, violent patients to deal with in this place. The security guards don’t have a high enough clearance to open the panic room, but I do.

Anthony starts running toward the room.

“Wait, Doc—get behind me!” I call. Anthony ignores me, probably too freaked out to have even heard me. There’s a hallway that leads off to the right just before the entrance to the room, and I’d be willing to bet my life that there are security guards waiting for us to rush into their line of sight.

“Anthony!” I boom, and the idiot finally jerks to a stop.

“What? This is it!”

Ben and I catch up to him and I push him against the wall, giving him a rough pat on the cheek. “You need to listen to me, or you’ll get yourself killed. Watch.” I wave a hand past the opening of the corridor. Within half a second, four guns fire. I jerk my hand back in time, but my heart’s racing with dread.

“Fuck,” I whisper. Those bullets missed by the breadth of a hair, and not many people have that kind of speed or aim.

“Security beat us.”

“No,” I mutter. “Those guns belong to Bloods.”

“How do you know?”

“I can hear the difference.”

“Oh Christ,” Anthony wails, starting to panic. “We’re dead. We take one step and we’re dead.”

“Calm down,” Ben tells him wheezily. “No use yammering on like a bitch.”

This shuts Anthony up immediately. I think I may love Ben Collingsworth.

I get the tear grenade off my belt, my mind working overtime to come up with a plan.

“His print won’t work on the door, will it?” Ben clarifies, jutting his thumb toward Anthony.

“No, it’ll have to be mine. I’ll get across, open the door, then I’ll distract the agents so you can carry Josi across.”

“They’ll just shoot you as soon as they see you!” Anthony hisses.

“I’ll be fine.”

I crack each of my knuckles, using the familiar movement to calm my heart to a more manageable level. My breathing slows and I can feel the adrenalin coursing through my limbs, making me stronger and faster. It’s a good thing—I’ll have to be
very
fast to survive this.

Unbelievably, Josephine takes this moment to start waking up. She sucks in a ragged breath and moans loudly, causing my heart to jerk in shock.

“Shit,” I breathe. “Keep her still and quiet.”

“How?” Anthony demands.

What is wrong with these two? Do I have to spell
every
tiny thing out? “Hold her firmly and cover her mouth if she starts to make too much noise,” I say clearly. This is distasteful to the doc, but I don’t have time for his stupidity.

I take a few steps back and get ready. If I can get across higher than they’re expecting, I’ll have a few extra moments while they readjust their trajectory. One last breath, and then I go for it. Launching myself into a sprint as fast I can, I wait until I’m one pace before the hallway and leap into a dive. I press myself as high into the air as I can and tuck my body into a tight ball. I can feel bullets whizzing through the air, but they’re too low. The force of my jump sends me forward quickly, and as soon as I’m past the hall I pull myself down into a roll. A bullet has grazed my back, but it’s shallow.