The Serophim Breach (The Serophim Breach Series) (22 page)

She knew it was over when Heather’s hands uncovered her own. Opening her eyes, she saw that most everyone in the station looked like her: huddled quietly against a wall, hands over their ears, eyes closed or vacant. Mike remained standing near the door, eyes focused blindly on the opposite wall.

“Why did they stop?” she whispered.

Heather stood and approached her father, arms crossed tightly across her torso.

“Dad?” she asked.

Mike blinked slowly, and Sarah saw that his eyes were rimmed with tears. He looked at his daughter without recognizing her, his face a blank mask. Heather put a gentle hand on his arm and repeated herself, quietly.

“Dad?”

After a second blink, Mike’s eyes cleared, and he looked at his daughter like he knew her face and could hardly bear to have it in front of his. He covered her hand with his own and straightened a bit before he answered.

“Yeah. We have to get out of here.”

Gordon, the rookie, and several others looked up in shock, and all started speaking at once. It was clear that they all agreed that Mike and the girls should not leave. Over the clamor, Mike started instructing both Sarah and Heather to take a few of the radios and some water. With both Gordon and the rookie trailing behind him, he moved to the hallway and started rummaging through desks and drawers in the rooms that lined it.

“What are you looking for?” Gordon demanded.

Mike didn’t answer.

Sarah heard him say, “Probably guns, right?” and continue on as he followed Mike from room to room.

The two girls waited in the lobby, where the conversation had turned to debate over the idea of leaving the station. A few women were pointing at the cracked glass door and saying, in voices edged with panic, that it was only a matter of time until the animals in the cells called the animals outside again. With no one left outside and unprotected, they would inevitably turn their attention to those of them trapped inside.

“We should go with them,” said the oldest woman in the group. She had gray roots and wore expensive jeans.

Everyone else in the lobby began insisting that it was lunacy to plunge into the darkness heading for who-knows-where with limited protection and no knowledge of what was going on.

“They said people are wearing BioSuits!”

“I heard something about a terrorist attack . . .”

“Bioterror. They release some sort of gas that kills anyone who comes in contact with it. We should be taping up all the windows and doors.”

“How else do you explain that madness . . . ?”

Mike walked back into the room, and everyone fell silent.

“You girls ready?” he asked.

Behind him, Gordon stepped forward with an irritated frown on his face.

“She’s your daughter,” he said, pointing at Heather. “But that one, she doesn’t belong to you. You should leave her here. Isn’t her family coming to get her?”

Mike spun instantly, grabbed Gordon ferociously by his shirt collar, and slammed him into the cinder block wall. He moved his face slowly toward the other man’s until his mouth was near Gordon’s ear.

“And will you let them in, Gordon?” he growled in a husky whisper. “Will you open that door? Or will you wait too long, and make her listen to them die too?”

Gordon’s face was turning purple as he gasped for air; Mike’s fist was pressed hard into his throat where he clasped the man’s collar.

“Hm?” Mike pressed harder, and Gordon swatted at his arm in protest.

No one said a word. Sarah felt as if everyone with them had silently agreed that Gordon was to blame for what they knew to be the massacre outside. She thought they might all let Mike kill him, when without warning, the older man let his captive go and Gordon collapsed, gasping against the wall, hunched over at the waist.

When Mike turned to look at them, her breath constricted in her chest. The room was not so dark that they could not see one another, but from where she stood, it seemed to her that Mike was a featureless figure, shrouded in the darkest part of the room, only the light from the battery charger reflecting in his eyes.

He must have seen the fear in her face, because he stepped forward a ways and diminished, becoming only Mike again, the man who was protecting both her and Heather, who would reunite her with her brother, come hell or high water.

“Sarah,” he said, “Gordon is right. I brought you here thinking that it would be a safe place to meet Kai. But now I don’t think it is. I think we need to go, and go soon.” He glanced at the cracked glass door, then back to them. In that moment, the conflict was plain on his face.

“I have to go home and check on Teri.” His voice failed him for a moment, and he looked to the ground. Finally, he held up a canister in his hand and said, “I found some spray paint. We’ll leave them a message and tell them where we’re going. They can pick up a radio when they get here, and we’ll be in constant contact from that point on. But, Sarah . . . if you want to stay, I will certainly understand. I don’t think you should. I really don’t think you should. But I won’t make you come with us.”

She looked away before he finished speaking, out the glass door and into the darkness, hoping desperately that she would see headlights and would be saved the decision. But instead, she saw the bloody mess on the sidewalk and the splintered glass that would not hold up against another ferocious attack.

“Stay here,” someone else in the room said. “We’re going to lock ourselves in the cells. We’ll be safe.”

She tried to imagine staying at the station. Maybe it would only be five more minutes, and then Kai would burst through the door and gather her up and take her someplace she could sleep and be warm and not afraid. But it might be longer; hadn’t they said the roads were blocked? She could be locked in here without friends, with no one to fight for her and no one to cover her ears. And with those animals . . .

“I’m coming with you,” she said without thinking, and looked back at Mike. He smiled warmly, and Heather hugged her against her body.

“You can’t open that door!” Gordon was back on his feet and shouting, his eyes wide. “We can’t let you open the door again!”

The blow from Mike’s fist made an ugly, flat sound, and Gordon crumpled to the ground. The older man stood shaking out his hand for a while, and then turned his attention to the cinder block wall. As he shook the spray paint canister, he asked in a voice that meant his question was not a question, “You guys mind if we take two of the guns from the locker?”

Consciousness returned to Brandon slowly, bringing with it a strange sort of throbbing in his muscles and the raw ache of thirst. Something about the way he felt reminded him of the times he had scuffed around the house with Kai until their hair stood on end, then played “shock wars.” That same uncomfortable energy pervaded his body, underscored by the dull exhaustion that normally accompanied heavy exercise. And his chest hurt.

He tried to pull his arms in and roll over, but he met a sudden resistance and realized his wrists were restrained. As he opened his eyes and the light sliced through to his brain, he realized something else: he was completely aware again. The cloud that had muddled his thoughts for months had lifted, and if he didn’t necessarily feel better, he certainly felt different. Clearer.

He was still considering this change when a nurse poked her head into the room. Seeing that he was awake, her eyes widened briefly before she could compose herself and murmur, “I’ll get Dr. Lau.”

Before he could respond, she was gone, and since he was restrained in a prone position, he let his head collapse back onto his pillow to wait. He wasn’t sure how he had ended up strapped to a hospital bed; bits and pieces came back to him when he closed his eyes and concentrated, along with tendrils of the rage and fear, of that insatiable impetus that now repulsed him. Afraid to think further, he opened his eyes again and stared at the ceiling, wondering where his family was.

The
click click
of Dr. Lau’s heels on the tiled floor announced her arrival, but Brandon lacked the energy to raise his head again. He felt her come into the room, and then her face was over his, concerned, worried, and guarded.

“Brandon?” she asked.

He smiled, or tried to smile, and croaked, “Hi, Dr. Lau. What’s going on?”

She told him the story of his arrival at the hospital as she raised his bed so that he was in a seated position, and gave him a small cup of tepid water, which he drained in one gulp. Rather than refill it, she handed him a cotton swab flavored with lemon to stimulate his saliva glands.

“Let’s see if you keep that down before we give you more,” she said, patting his hand. He noticed that she had not made a move to take off the restraints.

Once she told him that he had slipped into unconsciousness soon after arriving, she paused, and he took the opportunity to ask her where his brother was. The face she made told him she had not even considered this.

“I’m not sure,” she replied. “I didn’t see him drop you off. His name is just on the admission paperwork. I guess I should have checked on him . . . he’s probably really worried.”

Brandon nodded. “So . . . why am I strapped to the bed?”

It was clear that this was not a question his family doctor had been prepared to answer. She cleared her throat uncomfortably, avoiding his eyes for a moment.

“Do you remember anything, Brandon?” she asked.

Parts; but I don’t want to go back there
, he wanted to say. Instead, he focused his eyes on the far wall and took a deep breath.

“Not much. Nothing about getting here, or all this.” He moved his arms to demonstrate the limited range of motion. “To be honest . . . to be honest, I feel like most of the last few months have been a blur. Waking up in this room is the first time in a long time that I feel . . . well, awake. Like I can really see the room and hear what you’re saying . . . and want more water.” He glanced at her with a sheepish grin.

Pulling up a rolling stool, she sat down near his bed and nodded. When she didn’t say anything in response, he looked away again and tried to continue.

“I remember coming back to the island. I remember my dad and Kai picking me up at the airport, and seeing my old friends and stuff. And then, after a few weeks, I think I got kind of depressed. Being back home with them, and being done with school and everything . . . I don’t know. I remember wanting to sleep a lot. And then getting angry. I was just so pissed off all the time. Just seeing my brother’s face made me angry; I could just tell that he had been . . . content. And then I showed back up and upset everything.”

For a moment Brandon moved outside of himself again, and the familiar feelings and urges swept back in. He was so unhappy, so angry; a face that was a mix of Kai’s, and Dr. Lau’s, and his own, and a stranger’s swam in front of his eyes, and he wanted only to hit it, to knock the face out of the air and on to the ground, to bring his fist down into the nose over and over, to bite and tear and somehow be satisfied. The feel of the padded cuffs tightening against his wrists brought him back to his body, and he found that he was leaning forward, hands clenched, his mouth tensed in a sneer of hatred. Dr. Lau still sat at his side, her face a carefully composed mask of calm. Sagging back onto the bed, he let his head droop down onto his chest.

“That’s what I remember most,” he said quietly. “Just wanting . . . wanting to hurt everyone.”

In his peripheral vision, he saw her reach out to place her hand on his again. The pressure and warmth was a small reassurance, but he could sense that she was still wary. He blinked furiously as the tears welled in his eyes, embarrassed that he should be crying like a child.

He tried to ground himself in the room again, so that he could regain that sense of awareness he had enjoyed so much when he first woke up. He looked at the small TV mounted in the center of the opposite wall, expecting it to be on but muted, a comforting link to the mundane. Instead, it was a dark screen that reflected a small, distorted vision of him sitting in the bed, and Dr. Lau seated at his side. The window was another dark, reflective surface, offering no view of the outside. He turned his head again and tried to relax into the bed as he noted the bathroom door, the nurse call button, the fluorescent lights, the needle disposal container with the biohazard symbol emblazoned on the side.

Suddenly, without thinking, he chuckled and said, “I even tried some new antidepressant, thinking that might help.”

“Really? Do you remember the prescription?”

Brandon shook his head.

“No, it wasn’t really a prescription. I did a trial thing, on the other side of the island. They were studying a new drug, and they told me I qualified to be a part of the research. So I didn’t have to pay for it.”

Dr. Lau, who had seemed subdued until that point, perked up.

“Really? A drug trial? When did you do that?”

Without thinking, Brandon moved his hand to massage the bridge of his nose, where a headache was beginning to throb. The restraints clanked against the metal handrails on the bed again. Frustrated and overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of claustrophobia, he yanked at the cuffs. Dr. Lau jumped and brought her hands up into a defensive position, but quickly corrected her posture.

Composing herself, she said, “You need to be careful. You have sutures that can pop out if you move too much.”

“Is that why I’m tied down to the bed?” Brandon said, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice.

She watched him carefully for a long moment, studying his face. He returned her gaze, trying to take any anger out of his expression and remind her that he was just Brandon, the kid she’d seen a hundred times in her practice for sore throats and scrapes and flus. Finally, she sighed and moved her hand to the back of her neck.

“I don’t want to upset you, Brandon,” she said as she began to massage her shoulder. “After Kai brought you in, some strange things started to happen. You had a reaction, what looked like an allergy, to the IV we administered. Kai told the admitting nurse that you had been attacked and bitten.”