Killshot (Icarus Series Book 1) (45 page)

              “Just stay back, all of you,” the man said, nervously jabbed his gun towards us. “What you are doing to these people is wrong, you hear me? Now, back off. I am letting them out, and there is not a damn thing you can do to stop me.”

              “
We
are letting them out,” I snapped, stepping forward.

              “Wait…what?” He scrunched up his nose, whirling his shaky pistol towards me, then to Zander, and back. “No, uh-uh. Nice try, but you are with
them
.”

              “Them who?” I raised my gun back up. There was something oddly familiar about this guy. “What is this nut-job going on about?”

              “Shit, the uniforms,” Riley said, stripping her jacket off and tossing it to the floor. “He thinks we are with the Army!”

              “God, no,” I grunted. “Listen, mister, we are not with the damn army, I swear. We just kind of
borrowed
their outfits. Our friends were captured and we were just trying to get them out of here.”
“Maybe you saw them,” Zander asked. “Umm, young guy, scrawny genius type, ‘bout yay tall, and a prissy looking black girl?”

              “I, hang on…what?” He lowered his gun. “So, you are telling me you are
not
military?”

              “No Sir,” Zander said firmly.

              “Not even a little bit,” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “Do I strike you as the type to follow orders?”

              “I suppose not,” he nodded, as he shoved his gun into his belt and turned back to the door. “Well? Don’t just stand there with your thumbs up your asses. Either get the hell out of my way or help with this damn door. And don’t call me dude. Or mister, for that matter. The name’s Elias, but my friends call me Eli.”

              “Let me,” Zander said, gently pushing the man aside, as he squared up to the door.

              “Trust me, Eli, you are going to want to stand back,” Riley said, placing her hand gently on the man’s arm and leading him away from the door.

              “We are going to get you out of there,” Zander shouted through the window. “I need you all to step away from the door, please.”

              “Okay,” yelled a woman’s voice.

              “Is everyone back?” Zander yelled.

              “All clear,” the woman responded.

              Zander slammed his armored fist into door’s handle and sent it flying in one shot. The pieces clattered to the ground a few feet away, but the door still didn’t budge. Zander set to work on the massive hinges and the hydraulic mechanism that held metal door in place. Muffled screams and crying echoed from beyond the door as he bashed the hardware to bits. Soon enough, the remains of what held the door in its frame lay in pieces on the floor. The four of us wrestled the door open and let it drop to the floor. Two women slowly inched their way into the doorway and tentatively peeked their heads out.

              “It’s okay,” Eli said, holding his hand out to help them scale the fallen metal door. “We are here to help, but you need to hurry.”

              The first woman, a thirty-something blond wearing scrubs, grabbed his hand and stepped out into the hallway, cautiously taking in her surroundings. She positioned herself between our group and hers. She stiffened her jaw and sized each of us up. When our eyes met, I smiled at her and nodded over my shoulder toward the stairs.

              “That way,” I said.

              “Let’s go,” she shouted to the rest of them. “Everyone please stick together. And would you please stay alive, goddamn it?”

              “I like her,” I said, nodding my appreciation.

              “Remind you of anyone?” Riley whispered as we watched the people file out of lab number four.

              “Are you sure about this, Patty?” said a middle aged black woman, taking the nurse’s hand as she peered down the hallway.

              “Keep it moving, Belinda,” Patty said, giving the woman a gentle push.

              Belinda wore what had probably once been a very sharp, eggplant colored pant-suit. She hobbled down the hall wearing one purple high heel. Under her arm, she held its mate, the heel to which was literally hanging by a thread. With both hands, she dragged behind her two very frightened teenage girls. It looked as though neither of them had eaten in days. The younger of the two girls smiled at me and mouthed the words
thank you
, as they trudged past.

              There were easily twenty-five or thirty of them; all confined to a lab the size of a large walk-in closet. Each person that wandered past seemed more miserable and broken than the one before them. I couldn’t help but wonder how long they had been locked in that room. Their clothes reeked of squalor, and many of them looked ill. Patty stepped through the door and led the last of the survivors, an elderly doctor, out into the hall.

              “Here we go, Dr. Wilkins,” Patty said. “We are gonna get you out of here, okay?”

              The poor man appeared to have been beaten, quite literally, within an inch of his life. One eye had completely swollen shut and the other was cut in two places on his brow. His face and neck were covered in scrapes and bruises, none of which had been properly cleaned. His right arm was splinted with magazines, a necktie, and a woman’s scarf. He was wearing the dirtiest, bloodiest scrubs I had ever seen.

              “Thank you,” Dr. Wilkins said, smiling serenely as he hobbled past me.

              “That’s everyone,” Patty said. She led the doctor away. From down the hall, her voice echoed back to us, “May God bless you and keep you safe. Good luck, kids!”

              “They aren’t here,” I said, my heart sinking as I stepped into the dark room.

              “They may have already gotten out,” the shaky man said. “I let two groups go before you guys even showed up and one of them had already busted their way out.”

              A third blast exploded from somewhere inside the building, sending more debris and dust into the air and nearly knocking Riley to the ground. I caught her as she fell and braced myself against the wall so she would not take me with her. A loud crash reverberated down the hall as a twenty-foot section of ceiling grid and rafter beams came tumbling down. The rubble completely blocked the door to the stairwell. Seconds later, a large metal pipe burst just feet from where we stood, sending a rush of hot, stale smelling water into the corridor.

              “I think now would be a good time to make an exit,” Zander said, narrowly dodging a florescent light fixture, as it fell from its mounting.

              “We can’t,” I screamed at them. “We have to find them.”

              “Liv, we have to go,” Zander shouted at me. “The whole place is going to come down!”

              “He’s right, kid,” Eli said. “The army has this place rigged with enough explosives to level a city block.”

              All around us, pieces of the building were tumbling to the ground. Windows were shattering and the walls were cracking as the foundation shook like an earthquake. The door we had destroyed was bouncing up and down on the vinyl floor, rocked by the vibration from the last detonation.

              “But…Jake and Falisha,” I said, feeling my throat tighten. “They are here, somewhere. We have to find them.”

              “They got out,” Riley cut me off, staring blankly at the floor.

              “What?” I spun on her. “You can’t know that for sure, Riley. What if—?”

              “But I
do
, Liv,” she said, her eyes drilling into mine with a mixture of fear and confusion. “I don’t know
how
I know, but I do.”

              “But, what if—Oh God.” I imagined my friends, trapped somewhere in the hospital as it exploded into oblivion.

              “Liv, listen to me,” Riley said. “Sometimes you just have to let go and have faith that things will be alright.”

              “Faith, really?” The building shook and rattled beneath our feet and suddenly the irony of it all was too much. I burst out laughing, despite the tears that threatened, and the mayhem around us. “Don’t you dare talk to me about faith, Riley Baxter. Especially
now
.”

              “Come on, Liv. Faith is not limited to God,” she said, not backing down. “You don’t need to believe in a higher power, to have faith.”

              “She’s right,” Zander said, grabbing my hand. “Jake is a genius and you know Falisha has his back. We have to believe the two of them would find a way out.”

              “I promise you, Liv. They got out,” Riley demanded, “and they are going to need us, but we can’t be there for them
if we are dead.”

              “But—.”

              “Please, Liv?” Riley begged. “I know it sounds crazy, but…I just
know
. I get that you don’t have faith in Him anymore, but do you have faith in
me
?”

              Her hands shook in mine, but she held my gaze firmly. Somewhere, deep in those mocha brown eyes of hers, I saw the truth. Her faith was as unrelenting as it was undeniable. I nodded my assent, unable to find suitable words.

              “Thank you, Liv,” she smiled. She hooked her elbow through mine and shot Zander a look. “Now, can we
please
get the hell out of here?”

              “Follow me,” Eli said, ducking as ceiling tile narrowly missed his head. “I know a short-cut.”

              Eli spun on his heel and took off running without as much as a backward glance. We followed close behind, ducking and dodging the falling debris and veered around a corner as the hallway split in two directions. At the juncture of the two corridors was a large rounded desk, presumably a nurses’ station. Eli dove behind the big muddy-pink eye sore and scooped something up off the ground. He cradled the package with a sigh of relief, slipped back into the corridor and directed us to head left. We passed the employee lounge, the electrical room, and a utility closet.

              “This way!” He shouted, pointing to a small metal grate, about half way up the wall.

              “What…the hell…is that?” Riley sputtered between breaths.

              “Trash chute,” Eli said, groaning as he tried to wrestle the metal door open.

              Zander rushed over to help, easily sliding the latch free of its housing. The guys pushed the large metal door wide to reveal a dark opening, about three feet square, in the middle of the concrete wall. Just inside the opening was a small ledge that quickly dropped to a steep decline. The rusty ramp disappeared into the shadows a floor below us, at ground level. The green painted sides, as well as the bottom surface of the chute, had been scratched and scraped to the bare metal from years of use and abuse. The smell that wafted from the cavern was enough to curl your hair.

              Riley stepped closer, her hands barely resting on the rusted metal framework of the door as she peered down into the dark tunnel. Eli lowered his bundle to the floor and cupped his hands in front of him to give her a boost. “Up you go, young lady.”

              “You can’t be serious?” Riley said, stepping away as she buried her mouth and nose in her T-shirt.

              “Dead serious,” Eli said, meeting her gaze with a sarcastic scowl. “Unless you have a better idea, in which case, I am all ears.”

              “There has to be another exit,” I yelled. “There is always another—.”

              “Yeah, kid, there
was
,” Eli said, flinching as yet another ceiling tile came crashing down behind him. “Two explosions ago.”

              As much as I disliked the idea of Riley going down first, taking the lead would have meant leaving my best friend in a burning building that could collapse at any moment. Zander squeezed my hand as if hearing my unspoken dilemma and flicked his head in the direction of the chute.

              “Liv?” Riley’s eyes, though fearful, were determined. “Yay or nay?”

              “You got this, Ry,” I said, giving her a thumbs-up. “We will be right behind you, promise.”

              With a stiff nod, Riley grabbed onto Eli’s shoulders, slid her foot into his grasp, and allowed him to boost her up. Once he got her high enough to reach, she climbed awkwardly into the opening. She held tightly to the sides, refusing to look down into the tunnel, as she carefully maneuvered herself into a sitting position.

              “Dear God,” she muttered, nearly gagging on her words. “That is just vile.”

              Riley’s feet dangled down the dark tunnel. She tapped them together for a moment and breathed deeply as she rustled up her courage. She glanced over her shoulder at me then closed her eyes, crossed her arms over her chest and let go. A second later, she disappeared into the darkness. Her scream echoed up through the giant metal slide as she flew down the chute. She landed at the bottom with a thud.

              “Riley?” I shouted as I ran over to the chute and peered down it. The tunnel was empty and my best friend was out of view at the bottom. “Riley!”