Backwoods (31 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

By nothing short of a miracle, they managed
to make their way back to the main entrance of the laboratory, and
staggered together out into the night, the darkened expanse of the
courtyard. Only then were they able to cast aside their oxygen
masks, and both Andrew and Dani collapsed to their hands and knees,
side by side in the grass, dragging in deep, whooping mouthfuls of
air. It was cold outside, the pervasive chill made even worse
considering their clothes were soaked with blood.

Blood and God only knows what else,
Andrew thought, sitting up, grimacing as he drew the tacky, soggy
front of his T-shirt back, then let it slap against his skin
again.

“I couldn’t shoot,” Dani whispered, her voice
strained. “Andrew, I…I’m sorry. I couldn’t shoot. I just kept
seeing them in my mind, the way they were.” She blinked at him, her
eyes enormous, childlike and fearful, her face streaked with gore,
her hair sopping with it, clinging to her scalp and framing her
face in messy tangles. “I knew them. All of them except
Langley…they were my friends.”

“It’s alright.” Hooking an arm around her
neck, he drew her against his shoulder. She trembled in his embrace
and he kissed her brow, grime and gore be damned. “Everything’s
going to be alright now, Dani.”

“What happened back there?” she asked with a
timid glance over his shoulder at the lab.

“Inert gas fire suppression,” he said.
“Carbon dioxide. It’s heavier than oxygen, so it displaces it, puts
any fires out.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I mean, what
happened to them? To Langley and the others…to Alpha squad.”

He tried to explain, even though he felt
fairly certain her understanding of bioengineering would as limited
as his own.

“Dr. Moore did that to them? On purpose?” She
began to rock back and forth against him, clearly in shock. “ Oh,
God. Oh, my God.”

“It’s alright,” he soothed again, stroking
his hand against her hair. “Come on. We’re wet and it’s cold. We
need to get one of the trucks and get out of here.” He told her
about Moore and Alice’s escape, and what Moore had told him about
the roads leading to and from the compound.

“They’ve been clear the whole time?” Dani
asked. “But why would Major Prendick lie about that? Why would he
want us to think we couldn’t leave?”

“I don’t know.” Andrew shook his head.

They stood together and, huddled against the
chill, made their way across the courtyard toward the parking lot
and garage. “What happened to Langley,” Dani said. “That’s what was
happening to Thomas, wasn’t it?” Her eyes had grown tearful at the
mention of her friend and when Andrew nodded, she uttered a soft,
pained gasp. “They did that to them, Prendick and Moore. They meant
to do that to all of us.”

They’d neared the parking lot and could make
out the looming silhouettes of two heavy duty trucks parked near
the garage. “Where are the keys?” Andrew asked.

“By my desk,” Dani replied. “Inside the
garage.”

They both spared a long moment to study the
garage door, which unfortunately for them, was closed.

“The power’s out,” Dani said, breaking away
from Andrew and squatting in front of it. “But I think there’s
enough room to get our fingers beneath the bottom, try to raise it
by hand.”

“Okay.” Andrew crouched beside her, wedging
his fingertips between edge of the door and the pavement. “On
three?”

She nodded and he counted out. At three, they
both furrowed their brows and dug in their heels, grunting as they
strained to pry the enormous door up on its tracks. With a grating
squall of metal against metal, it lurched and rumbled slowly,
begrudgingly up a few inches. It was all they could manage before
the strain grew too much, and they both released their grips,
resting for a moment.

“If we can get it up a little more, I can
crawl underneath,” Dani said.

“Let’s try again, then.” Andrew slid his
hands beneath the metal rim. “One, two…
three!”

Again, he gritted his teeth as he and Dani
both heaved against the door. This time, the scraping as it rolled
up the tracks sounded agonized and shrill. It moved slightly
higher, no more than a few centimeters and exhausted, they had to
fall back.

“Did you mean what you said?” she asked.
“Back inside the lab, when I was still locked inside Moore’s
office. You told me I was your reason. Did you mean that?”

He looked at her for a long moment, holding
her gaze, unable to turn his eyes from her.
Yes,
he wanted
to tell her.
Yes, I meant it, each and every word.

“Dani,” he said softly, reaching for her. He
let his fingers brush lightly against her face. She smiled at his
touch, turned her face toward the caress.

He was so distracted that at first, he
thought the sharp ratcheting sound he heard was the door lifting in
the overhead tracks, that somehow the power had come back on and
its motor was raising it once more toward the ceiling. It wasn’t
until he felt bright, searing pain lance through his right ankle
and his entire leg abruptly gave out from underneath him, sending
him crashing to the ground, that he realized.

Gunshots. I’ve been shot!

“Andrew!” Dani cried, then more shots rang
out, the rapid
patta-pat-PATTA
of an M16 assault rifle set
to
burst
mode, allowing a torrent of rounds to fly from
behind them. They clanged in a noisy, staccato burst against the
metal garage door, leaving dented craters with each resounding
impact, sending a spray of sparks as they struck.

“Run,” he yelled, scrambling forward, ducking
his head and forcing his shoulders beneath the thick lip of the
garage door. “Dani, take cover!”

She dove for the garage door, smaller than he
was, wriggling beneath more easily. His waist had cleared, his ass
nearly so, but when she reached to help him, getting her feet
beneath her again, more bullets punched into the slick concrete
floor between them, forcing her to dance back.

“Stop shooting,” she screamed, even as more
rounds pelted into the garage door, an overlapping barrage of
drum-like pounding. “Whoever’s out there shooting, stop,” she
yelled again. “It’s Specialist Santoro and Andrew Braddock. We’re
friendlies! We’re friendlies!”

Andrew had made it into the garage and
crawled on his belly away from the threshold, trying to get out of
the line of fire, dragging his injured leg uselessly behind him.
Reaching the side of the nearest truck, he sat up against the front
wheel and jerked up the cuff of his pants. The bullet had sheared
away a hefty chunk of flesh from the back of his ankle.
Shit,
he thought, clapping his hand against the wound. Blood
had soaked his sock and pooled in his boot. He could feel it there,
squishing and hot beneath his heel.

“Andrew,” he heard Dani call out. He risked a
peek around the truck’s front bumper and saw her crouched against
the wall by the partially opened door. “Are you okay?”

“I’m hit,” he called back. Using the fender
to brace himself, he tried to get to his feet. Each time he’d
settle his weight against his injured leg, however, it would
abruptly fail him, sending him crashing to his knees with a
frustrated, hurting cry. “I can’t stand up.”

“Hang on. I’m coming,” Dani said. But as soon
as she ventured a cautious step forward , new rounds burst out,
plowing chunks out of the concrete near her feet and she scrambled
back again, yelping in fright.

“Who’s out there, goddamn it?” she shouted.
“We’re friendly, I said.
Friendly!”

The shots stopped. As the resonant echoes
subsided, a heavy silence fell upon the dark garage. Then, from
outside, a soft but steady sound, the crunch of thick boot treads
against concrete. Footsteps.

“I would have thought you’d be dead by now,
Mister Braddock,” a voice called as a pair of legs stepped into
view beneath the edge of the door. “I’ve given you plenty of
opportunities.”

A familiar voice.

“Prendick,” Andrew seethed. When the bullets
had flown again, he’d shrunk behind the truck’s tire, but raised
himself enough now to look beyond the grill. As he watched, Major
Prendick crouched down and entered the garage, crawling the way
he’d undoubtedly learned in basic training ages earlier: on his
belly, his rifle in his hands, his head raised so he could keep a
wary eye ahead of him. Once inside, he stood again, sweeping his
gaze cautiously around, waiting for his field of vision to adjust
to gloom. Cocking the M16, he chambered a round, then clasped the
gun at the ready.

“And you, Specialist Santoro,” he said. “I’m
extremely disappointed in this gross dereliction of duty. This is
going to go down in my report, I’m afraid, along with a
recommendation you be brought up on official charges. You’re
looking at a bad-conduct discharge, young lady, along with
forfeiture of pay and jail time. All mandatory. I hope aiding and
abetting Mister Braddock in the undermining of this facility and
its operations has been worth it.”

Past the older man’s shoulder, Andrew saw
Dani, even though Prendick hadn’t yet. She’d been crouching,
motionless, in the shadows by the doorway, but moved her hand now,
reaching for something lying on the floor. Andrew couldn’t make out
what it was until she picked it up and it caught a wink of dim
light—a monkey wrench. Looking across the garage, she met Andrew’s
gaze, her eyes round and imperative.

He read her loud and clear.

“The only one guilty of anything around here,
Prendick, is
you,”
he snapped, watching the man’s face whip
in the direction of his voice. Prendick swung the gun toward him as
well, his finger folding against the trigger, and with a yelp,
Andrew scrambled back on his hands and knees as bullets peppered
the front end of the truck. Within the confines of the garage’s
interior, the sound was deafening, like overlapping rounds of
cannon fire.

“You missed me,” Andrew yelled, once the
echoes faded and the pungent stink of scorched gunpowder began to
dissipate.

He heard the faint squeak of rubber against
the floor as Prendick stepped toward him, then the older man
chuckled. Andrew pressed himself onto his belly so he could look
beneath the truck. He could see Prendick from the knees down, as
well as Dani as she peeled herself away from her corner by the
doorway and began inching along behind the Major, the wrench raised
in her fist.

“You’re a good one to talk about dereliction
of duty, you son of a bitch,” Andrew called out, baiting Prendick.
“Since it’s your fault those guys in Alpha squad ended up monsters.
Moore tried to tell you what would happen if you gave them the
virus too fast, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“I’m having trouble deciding where I’m going
to shoot you next, Mister Braddock,” Prendick said, still in an
odd, friendly sort of voice.

“You set up every soldier in this camp,”
Andrew snapped. “They trusted you and you brought them out here to
put that shit inside of them, use them as your goddamn guinea
pigs.”

“Some place that won’t be immediately fatal,”
Prendick continued, sounding unfazed.

“You mean like Idaho?” Andrew called back.
“Because the way you shoot, that’s about all you’re going to hit,
you dumb fuck.”

“Some place that’s sure to cause you
excruciating pain,” Prendick said, then uttered a little
a-ha!
sound. “I know.”

Pivoting, he squeezed the trigger, shooting
at Dani.

“No!” Andrew screamed, just as Dani’s
anguished cry overlapped his own. She jerked in an erratic,
convulsive dance as several of the rounds struck her, then she
crumpled to the floor, laying in a sprawled, motionless heap.

“You son of a bitch,” Andrew howled at
Prendick, groping at the body of the truck and kicking vainly with
his feet as he struggled to rise. Again and again, his foot failed
him and he collapsed. “You son of a bitch!”

Prendick smiled as he turned away from Dani
and approached the truck. “I’ve done my duty at this outpost,” he
said to Andrew. “Just like I’m doing it now.”

“
Duty?
Thomas O’Malley is dead because
of you. Lieutenant Carter’s dead. All of the soldiers in Alpha
squadron, everyone who was stationed here, they’re all dead now
because of what you. That’s your duty?”

“The United States government expects
results, Mister Braddock,” Prendick replied coldly when he stepped
around the front fender. Shouldering the rifle, he took aim at
Andrew’s face. “A return on their investment. Lieutenant Carter
wasn’t prepared to give that to them. Nor, as it turns out, was Dr.
Moore. But their failings—their
weaknesses,
Mister
Braddock—are not my own, I assure you. I am unafraid to embrace
risk in the name of duty, to suffer necessary casualties as a
result of those responsibilities.”

The headlamps of a truck facing them, less
than twenty feet away, abruptly snapped on, pinning Andrew and
Prendick in a sudden, broad swath of bright light.

“What the—?” Prendick turned as Andrew
squinted against the blinding glare, trying to shield his eyes with
his hand. He heard the growl of the engine revving, the squall of
its thickly treaded tires against the garage floor. Like a
Rottweiler turned loose from its leash to lunge at a would-be
intruder, the enormous vehicle plowed forward.

Andrew had less than a second to scrabble
backwards in frantic alarm, ducking beneath the truck behind him.
Flat on his belly, he clapped his hands over his head, his
frightened cry drowned out by the roar of M-923 five-ton cargo
truck’s diesel engine as it slammed into the one above him. When
one truck’s massive bumper plowed headlong into the other’s broad,
steel-plated flank—mashing Prendick like so much peanut butter in a
sandwich between them—it sounded like the eruption of some great
and terrible volcano, a caldera of epic and catastrophic
proportions that had lain dormant for millennia, its inner stew of
magma and searing gases released in a sudden, apocalyptic
explosion. The floor beneath Andrew shuddered violently; a sharp
blast of wind from the point of impact buffeted him and the screech
of metal against metal, twisting, warping, bending, snapping,
ripped through the air. The force was enough to shove the truck
over Andrew’s head sideways a good three feet, and after a long
moment in which he huddled against the floor, shaking and shaken,
he lifted his head, wide-eyed and breathless, to find himself
blinking at the scorched, stinking treads of the other truck’s left
front tire. It had come to a stop less than two inches from
Andrew’s head.