The Serophim Breach (The Serophim Breach Series) (43 page)

They were seconds away from what appeared to be the gate when Jones awoke, screaming and thrashing in the cage behind them. Paul cried out for his friend, shouting for him to hang on, that they were at the hospital, but Jones’s screaming drowned out his gentle pleading. Kai put a hand on his brother’s shoulder; they were approaching a fortified gate, where three well-armed Marines waited for them in full gear, their eyes narrow and appraising. The one nearest to the gate raised his left hand, signaling for them to stop the car.

Kai began to roll down the window, but the Marine shouted to him to stop.

“Just enough so you can hear me,” the young man shouted, glancing down the street in both directions. “Do you have someone in need of emergency medical care?”

“Yes,” Kai shouted back, certain that the man could hear the cries coming from Jones.

The Marine nodded. “Once inside, you will need to display valid ID, and those in need of medical aid will be transferred to triage. Do you understand?”

Kai nodded.

“We do this quickly, so listen carefully to me. You need to begin pulling your car forward before we allow the gate to swing open. If at all possible, please keep the vehicle close to the right-hand side of the entrance, where the gate will be opening. Proceed quickly and carefully, and come to a complete stop at that stop sign,” the Marine shouted, pointing at a makeshift stop sign erected fifteen feet from the gate. “You will want to keep your windows closed and turn your air conditioner off. Begin when you see me signal you forward. Understand?”

“Yes,” Kai shouted, and rolled up his window. It was obvious that the young Marine was tense, ready for something to happen, and Kai didn’t like being on the outside. But all he could do was brace himself and wait for the signal.

The other two Marines clambered up the sides of the Humvees parked at either side of the gate, each crouching to grab something from a box sitting atop the hood. When they straightened, Kai could see they had two metallic canisters each. They both set their feet and hurled the canisters out into the street behind the cruiser.

“Turn the air off!” Paul cried, his voice nearly obscured by Jones’s garbled shouts.

At the same moment, the young Marine at the gate motioned swiftly with his hand for Kai to move forward, and so he pressed lightly on the gas, turning the wheel slightly to bring the car toward the right-hand side of the entrance.

Paul shot his hand out and turned off the air conditioner, then flipped all the vents closed. He was muttering, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit” to himself, looking frantically out the window as he tried to get all the vents shut. Kai glanced back and saw evil-looking fog billowing out from the ground where the canisters had landed, tendrils of it snaking through the air toward their car.

“Is that gas?” Paul shouted.

Kai didn’t answer. He was only inches from the gate, and it hadn’t started to open yet. Still, he rolled the car forward, and at the last second, he saw the metal shudder and then begin to pull open. At the same moment, he heard a shrill cry from outside the vehicle; doing his best to keep the car moving steadily and close to the fence, he stole a glance in the rearview mirror, instantly sucking in a quick, frightened breath at what he saw.

A mob of figures, pawing their way through the green-yellow haze, sprinted forward directly toward their vehicle, some hobbling strangely, others moving with ferocious speed. Within seconds, they were on the car, slamming their bodies into the trunk and the windows, clawing at the roof and dragging their bloody, broken bodies up as best they could. A young woman in a ruined suit threw herself against the moving gate, her fingers hooking into the links, but her grip slipped as the cruiser nudged it, and she tumbled backward onto the hood of the car, her head cracking against the windshield, vibrant crimson blood splattering over Kai’s field of vision.

“Shit!” he shouted, and the woman was instantly on her stomach, her hands scrabbling at the glass, smearing the blood as she tried to dig into the vehicle. Through the mess, Kai could see her face, her mouth open, teeth missing, nose crooked and swollen, one eye so bruised it could no longer open.

For a second, he thought he heard someone outside the cruiser shouting. It sounded like, “Scrape them off,” and so he swung the wheel right, feeling the car tremble and rock as the people hanging on began to hit the fence. They screamed and shrieked, but he continued forward, and suddenly he was through.

Hands grabbed the woman from the cruiser’s hood, hurling her to the ground and out of Kai’s field of vision. One other person had managed to get through the gate, and he saw two Marines struggling to knock the man to the ground with the butts of their weapons. At the gate, several Marines were using their weapons to shove the attackers away, the heavy guns connecting often with already battered faces. But still, the people outside clasped at the fence until the yellow fog engulfed the scene; he could only make out vague figures without any certainty as to what was going on.

The young Marine who had spoken to him at the gate was at his window suddenly, pounding on the glass.

“Pull forward to the sign,” he shouted, his voice thick and muffled through the window.

Dazed, Kai pulled the car forward the last ten feet, then stopped where he had been told. The Marine trotted up behind him and motioned for him to roll down his window. As he did, the scent of smoke wafted into the car.

“Is that gas?” Kai asked. His brain was slowing, turning the image of the woman on the hood over and over, like a DVD caught on a few frames.

The Marine shook his head.

“Just smoke,” he said tersely. “But we had some people coming in claiming they were experiencing side effects, so we started having people turn the air off.”

He craned his head in to peer into the backseat, where Jones lay quietly. He had stopped screaming, but his body still shuddered, his teeth chattering loudly.

“Who else needs medical attention?” the Marine asked.

“Just him,” Kai responded. “Can we see Dr. Lau?”

As the words came out of his mouth, he realized how insane he sounded. They had just pulled into an emergency triage center, and he was asking to see his family doctor. The Marine quickly told him he had no control over the issue and asked him to unlock the doors. Two medics materialized from behind a vehicle, toting a stretcher, and Kai reached out to hit the unlock button. As they pulled Jones moaning from the backseat, Kai realized that the Marine was asking him to get out of the vehicle.

He was unsure how he had gotten out of the car, but suddenly he found himself standing off near a curb with Paul next to him, answering a string of questions from the same young Marine.

“Were you attacked?”

“Yes.”

“In what capacity?”

“I’m . . . I’m not sure.”

“What kind of injuries were sustained?”

“Jones was the only one hurt really. Some of her blood got in his cut.”

“No bites?”

Kai shook his head.

“You’ll need to go to the second tent over there for an exam. They’re going to strip you and look for wounds or bites. So don’t lie to me.”

“No bites. No wounds.”

The young Marine asked them a few more questions and then led them to the tent he had pointed to, where a medic waited in a curtained area and made them peel off their clothes, one by one, looking them over thoroughly. When he was satisfied that they hadn’t sustained any injuries, he directed them to a table where they were to fill out paperwork and show identification.

Once they had stumbled through the line and back out into the cool predawn air, they were told to find a spot to sit and wait. Kai looked at the man who was directing them.

“Wait for what?” he asked, his voice still feeling thick in his throat.

“We’re working on evacuations at the moment. Shouldn’t be too long now,” the man responded, and then turned to walk back into the tent.

“Wait,” Kai said. “Can we go into the hospital? My brother’s in there.”

The man raised his eyebrows.

“He was checked in before last night?”

“Yes, earlier in the day yesterday,” Kai responded. “Please, I left him here to go get my sister, but I need to get in to see him.”

The man held Kai’s eyes for a long moment, and Kai could see he was trying to make a decision. Finally, he looked away toward the hospital and licked his lips.

“They’re only admitting people inside for the ER and OR,” he said quietly. “I don’t think they’re allowing any visitors.”

“We volunteer here,” Paul said. “I’m premed, and my brother here is a sports therapist. We work with Karen Lau, and she’s treating our brother. I’m sure she could find something useful for us to do if you could get in touch with her.”

Kai did his best not to look shocked at his brother’s blatant and easy lie, passing a hand over his eyes as if trying to clear his head, rather than trying to avoid making eye contact with the older man. When he thought he was reasonably composed, he met the man’s searching eyes again and waited for a response.

“Come back in the tent,” the man said hesitantly.

They followed him back inside, where he handed them two laminated cards.

“These are passes to the ER. You’ll have to speak to the guard there and tell him what you told me. Tell him you need to use the phones . . . everything outside the building is still down. At best, he’ll give you five minutes to get her on the phone and get instructions from her. That’s really all I can do.”

Kai thanked him, trying not to sound too grateful and give the man the impression that he had done them a favor. They turned to head toward the hospital.

“Try not to draw attention to yourselves,” the older man called after them. “Pretty much everyone wants to get inside.”

The Marine at the door took less convincing than Kai had anticipated; he examined their passes closely and asked them briefly whom they were looking for, then directed them to the nurse’s station, where Kai had sat less than twenty-four hours earlier, checking his brother into the ER. Instead, it was the nurse waiting there who posed the real problem; she was the same woman who had helped him with Brandon, and she kept looking at him as if she remembered him somehow.

“They told us we could be more helpful inside,” Paul told her when she asked how they had gotten passes. “We were helping in the tents, but the doctors inside are more shorthanded. They mentioned Dr. Lau in particular, and since we’ve worked with her before . . .”

The nurse frowned, but then picked up the nearby phone and dialed a short number. Kai heard one ring, and then a buzzing female voice on the line.

“This is the ER. I have two men here from the tents, and they say they’ve been sent in to assist Dr. Lau.” The nurse repeated their story, then listened to the reply on the other end. She moved the mouthpiece away and said, “Dr. Lau is in with a patient at the moment.”

“Can I speak?” Paul said, gesturing for the phone. Kai’s mouth nearly dropped open at his brother’s audacity, but the confident gesture seemed to stun the nurse into compliance, and she handed him the phone.

“Hello? Yes, hi . . . My name is Paul, and I’ve been instructed to assist Dr. Lau with transporting a patient. Brandon Kavida. . . . Sure, thanks so much.” He moved the mouthpiece and whispered to them, “She’s calling Dr. Lau on another phone.”

They waited together, Kai’s eyes glued to his brother, who appeared both calm and confident. He could hear the nurse on the other end, her voice more faint now that she was speaking into another phone, but he caught her repeating their name, and then a male voice picked up on the line. After a brief pause, a sudden burst of sound made Paul jerk the phone away from his ear.

“What the hell was that?” Kai exclaimed.

Paul’s mouth was agape, his eyes wide in shock.

“I think it was a gunshot,” he choked.

~

The detached medical part of her mind was marveling that Brandon had not stirred at the sound of gunfire from directly down the hallway. It was possible that it sounded so much louder to Karen because she had heard it over the phone as well as echoing off the walls, but still . . . he had not moved an inch. Without thinking, she had moved instantly to his side to check his pulse, one hand on his chest and two fingers on his neck, feeling the heart beating and blood pumping together. She glanced quickly at his IV drip; he’d been given morphine for the pain of his wounds, and she wondered if whatever had infected him—and her—made them more susceptible to the sedative effects of the drug.

Finally, the part of her brain that was screaming at her to realize her nurse had probably been shot, perhaps even killed, cut through the medical habit, and she began to shake uncontrollably. She listened hard, but there were no sounds coming from the hallway, and she was immediately grateful that both an ID card and a code were needed to access this area of the hospital.

Still, she was completely terrified and utterly unsure of what to do. She found herself looking around the room for defensive weapons, but quickly realized what a foolish exercise that was. There was nothing in here that would provide her any protection from a bullet. Her eyes found the phone on the floor where she had dropped it, and she crossed the room back to the receiver as quietly as possible, then lifted it gingerly back to her ear. On the other end, the phone was still off the hook; for a moment she heard nothing, and then came the gentle “click” on the receiver being set back on its base. The dial tone followed immediately after.

Panic threatened to overwhelm her. Inside her hospital, she was safe; she knew how to diagnose, how to react to problems and new symptoms, how to research and adapt to new situations. But this, this was an utterly new reality to be faced with, and the only thing she knew for sure was that her instincts about the men from the CDC had been correct.

Karen pressed the phone back onto the base before lifting it back to her ear, and dialed the lab. The phone rang twice, three times, four, and she found herself seething with frustration at Thad.

“Pick up the phone,” she hissed through clenched teeth, each ring feeling like a slap in the face. Then finally, she heard him pick up.