Tainted (30 page)

“You drugged me.” Em flings a canister of cotton swabs but misses. The white puffs scatter on the floor, soaking up water and blood. “You used me like a goddamn puppet!”

“Emma,” I say, holding my hands out like I’m approaching something wild. “Stop. She’s not worth it.”

“Not worth it?” she shrieks. Emma stamps to the other side of the lab, over to the banks of drawers. “After everything she’s done? All the people she hurt?
Me
? Oh, believe me, she’s worth it, Alex. Where’s something to kill her?”

The lab is full of murderous things. Thankfully, Emma’s looking in the wrong places. I edge toward the cabinet dedicated to the Lazarus Protocol.

“Come on, Emergizer,” I try to reason with her, “Look at her. Hailey’s down. She’s unconscious.”

“No,
Hailey
is not!” Em almost spits my ex-girlfriend’s name. A bed pan clutched in one hand, the lid to a jar in the other, she spins toward her tormentor. Swearing, Em hurls the pan, then the lid. They connect with Hailey’s leg, the heavy lid thwacking against her knee. She doesn’t flinch. “She’s awake. She’s playing you for a fool, like she’s been doing all along. And you wanna know the sad thing? She
told
me you wouldn’t believe me, either!”

How can I believe her? Anyone getting hit like that would make some kind of response.

Jason swears outside the doors, then they swish open. He dodges another bed pan bouncing from the table. “Jeezus!”

Emma finally finds a cabinet with stacked, prepped surgical trays. She nabs one, and storms across the room, ripping off the sterile plastic cover as she goes.

“No, Em!” I grab for her and she spins in a turn as graceful as Hailey might’ve done, dancing out of my arms. “Jason, help! She can’t kill her!”

My best friend lacks the subtlety to make a grab for the girl. Jason goes for a take-down instead. He dives for Emma and brings her to the floor in a snare of arms and legs. The tray skids on the floor, a scalpel falling free. Too far gone in her own madness, Em swears and throws an elbow back in Jason’s face. The strike connects, but he holds on.

I pop open the cupboard and grab a couple of sedative syringes. If Em doesn’t calm down, she’s going to do something she’ll always regret. I’m not saving Hailey from her, I’m saving Emma from becoming the same kind of monster as Hailey. Jason dodges when Emma shoves another elbow at his nose. Her hand slips free and connects with my cheek when I approach.

“No!” Emma shouts. “Don’t you see? You’re her puppet now.”

“I’m not doing this for her,” I say, and grab Emma’s chin. I stare into her blue eyes. “I’m doing this for you.” A whisper of guilt swishes through my head when I inject the sedative into her neck.

Emma goes lax in Jason’s arms, the look of betrayal slowly dissolving from her face.

“Alex,” she says, as her eyes close, “You gave her what she wants.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The bed behind us rattles. Jason’s jaw drops, and his arms tighten around Emma. Blood going icy, I turn. Hailey, very conscious, sits and laughs. “Batman and the Boy Wonder come to save the day,” she teases. “You really should’ve listened to that banshee. But thank you for drugging her.”

“Help,” Jason whispers, sinking a little under Em’s weight. “Alex…”

“Oh yes,” Hailey says, wrenching her hand free of the wrist restraint I couldn’t see and claws at the wrist restraint closest to me. “Run and help your best friend negotiate your unconscious girlfriend’s weight.”

If I don’t help Jason, he’s going to fall and hurt himself, possibly Em. If I do help him, it leaves Hailey unguarded.

Dammit. I can’t turn away from my friend’s need. I hurry to his side, and take Emma from him. She dangles from my arms, blood still dripping to splat in the shallow water slicking the floor. Using the edge of the counter, Jason stands. He grabs another gurney from the corner for me to place Emma on. After I do, I take a play from Hailey’s book, slip out my phone and set it for unlimited recording. Jason pretends to stumble toward me and helps me hide it in my chest pocket.

“You are fools for that girl,” Hailey says, condescending and sarcastic. She arches toward her feet, unclasping the ankle restraints while she says, “Don’t you love how my formula works, Alex? Squelches inhibitions and makes the victims compliant. Pharmaceutical mind control. Hell, your sweet little Emma was my pet monkey for weeks.”

“So, you drugged her,” I say, and catch Jason when he stumbles for real, “and used her to do your dirty work?”

“Not just her.” Hailey evades my grab for her, flipping off the table, feet splashing in the water from the busted water main. I circle toward her left, but she keeps the metal frame between us, shaking her head and smiling at me. Her gaze darts to the doors, to the tray of surgical implements floating on the water now, and then back to us. “Trent and Katrina, too.

“Your blond guinea pig was stubborn.” Hailey shoves the bed at me, and I kick it back, ramming her against a cabinet. “I could only push her so far.

“She shut down when I commanded her to do something bad. And
you
…” she says, ducking to the side and scooping a couple blades from the tray when it bumps her foot. “You were too damn good at running interception. First the mall, then the Reindeer Games, and my house, too. She should’ve been caught and arrested, but no! You’re so damn dedicated to her,” she yells, “so damn dedicated to all your new friends!”

Jason and I separate, one to either end of the gurney. When we both make a grab for Hailey, she lashes out, the blade of a knife cutting my forearm. Jason pushes around the end, and she hurls a scalpel. It buries inches deep into Jason’s gut. He lets out a shocked breath, then gasps when the next one slams into his chest. Dark blood wells around the one in his stomach. Jason’s foot slips in the water flooding the lab and he falls.

I take advantage of Hailey indulging in a mocking laugh and shove the table from between us. She dives toward the side and I wrap my arms around her legs. My grip is slippery, though, from the blood on my arm. Hailey snakes around and swipes at my face with her fingernails. She hooks her claws in my hair when I jerk my head to the side. Her knee comes up and smashes into my jaw.

Stunned, I fumble for a hold on her, but she slips through my hands and stumbles back into the wall. I jump to my feet and pin her to the drywall with my shoulder. She squirms, so I push harder, and pull another needle full of sedative from my pocket. I flick the protective cap off and jab it into the vein in her arm.

“Close your eyes,” I tell her.

“Because life is a lie,” Hailey quotes my mother’s headstone. Then she says, “Antidote…”

The anger leaves her face; the tension filling her snaps and uncoils. Hailey’s body crumples to the floor, and I leave her there, face inches from the water. Let it rise. Let her drown. Emma was right, she’s not worth it. Any of this. Not my time, not my girlfriend’s life or my best friend’s pain.

I drop the syringe on top of Hailey. Liquid splashes up, an empty vial falls from her pocket. Debris floats out of my way when I rush to Jason’s side. He’s on his knees, two bloody scalpels near him, staining the water around them pink with his blood. The crimson travels halfway up one of the handles. If that’s the one from his stomach, Hailey could have hit something vital. One stiff hand hovers over the red leaking through his shirt, but when I reach for him, he bats me away.

“Let me see, Jason. She could’ve hurt you.”

“She did.” Jason rolls up his shirt, and displays an almost direct strike at his liver. Thick, dark blood seeps through the short gash. “We’ll go to the hospital after she’s locked–” he blinks, looks around the room, “Where is she?”

“What are you talking about?”

Jason points with a bloody hand to where Hailey’s slumped on the floor. Only, she isn’t. Hailey’s gone. “Where
is
she?”

I scan the room, looking under tables, beside and behind cabinets. In the corner, where a hanging curtain usually ties back, a slit of light shines through a vertical crack in the wall.

“She did say antidote. Dammit. She must’ve taken an antidote to the sedative before I injected her!” She’s always one step ahead of us.

“Shit,” Jason drawls. “The bitch got away again.”

“No, she didn’t.” I stand, hold a hand out to Jason. He pulls up to standing, clutching his right side. “She hasn’t had time to get very far. I’ll catch her. You stay here with Em and Paul.”

“They’re both out,” he says, “I’m staying with you. She’s never going to stop if someone doesn’t do it for her.”

“You sure you’re OK?”

“Enough to do this.”

I’m excruciatingly aware of the slight shuffle in his step, the way he leans toward the pain. He should stay behind. When I get to the split in the wall, I pry open a secret door. A wheeze escapes Jason and he presses a hand to the puncture wound on his side. Standing half in, half out of the hidden door, I suggest, “Why don’t you stay here and take care of them for me?”

“Someone needs to take care of you,” he insists.

Jason’s stubborn streak is narrow, but very deep. I slide through the door into a hidden passage, all raw wood joists and bricks, and wedge the panel open with a block on the dusty floor. The narrow hall terminates in wooden stairs leading down into the dark. Water from the main lab seeps under the wall, and drips on the stairs.

Before going any further, I email the audio file to the police and to Paul’s cellphone for a backup.

One step down into the black stairwell and I know they’re treacherous.

“They’re soaked,” I whisper, looking back.

He nods, and braces a hand on the wall leaving a bloody print. I hurry down the stairs, careful to avoid the shiny wood, then run into a partially closed door. Jason slips, swears at the “goddamn slimy sonofabitch step” and slams into my shoulder.

We burst through the door, me first with Jason right behind. A skinny, dim-lit earthen tunnel snakes away in either direction, the stench of rotten meat hangs thick in the air. My toe hooks on something and filthy dirt flooring zooms at my face. If it wasn’t for Jason grabbing my belt and catching me midair, I would fall face down across the passageway. The reek drives up my nose, strong and insistent.

Bracing myself, I drop a hand to the ground, scant millimeters from a puddle of ichor beneath it. The thing’s so decomposed I can’t tell what it was – little left but a wet 3-D puzzle of jutting white bones, fur tufts and flesh. I can’t stop the gag.

The sound echoes off the hard walls. A retreating figure stops at the sound and flings a look back.

Hailey. She cocks her arm, a flash of steel glinting in the downturned light.

“Shit!” I force myself upright, and then duck back, shoving Jason behind the thin cover of the flung-open metal panel. A bang rings through the tunnel, the door shudders with the force of whatever Hailey threw.

“Dude,” he whispers, fear rolling off him in waves, “where are we?”

“Apparently,” I say, “secret underground tunnels. I bet that’s how they got the animals to the mall.”

A deep groan fills the tunnel, followed by a thud and the sound of running water. Footsteps pound in our direction, echoed and fractured by the walls and punctuated by sharp metallic sounds. The door slams open, shoving me off balance. Hailey lunges in, green eyes like chips of ice. She slashes wildly with her only weapon, a final scalpel, slicing open a cut across my chest, and one in my right thigh. Clutching my leg, trying to hold the gaping edges together, I fall back and topple into Jason. Hailey smiles that bitch smile and rams the blade deep into the red between my fingers, lodging it in the muscle.

“Oh my God, Alex!” Jason yells. Hailey flees, a massive splashing following her, echoing off the walls.

Water shoots from random spots, spews around the door, soaking us. Another earthen growl sounds down the gurgling throat of the tunnel and the water level shoots higher. Twitches convulse in the damaged muscle of my thigh, the knife shaking above it, foul liquid splashing right below it.

I push the door, drag my body through. Jason’s right on my heels. “You can’t chase her like that.” He turns his body, stepping between me and the hall.

“You can’t either. She’ll kill you!” I make a grab for him.

“I’m just the walking dead,” he says with a half-smile.

The sodden earth around us lets another cry loose. Water gushes up and the ceiling cracks, mud raining down. Terror clenches my lungs. I stumble, catch myself on the wall. My leg’s gone numb, the muscle still in spasm. A massive chunk of ceiling rips loose above me.

“Alex, move!” Jason yells.

He grabs my shoulders and shoves me back into the stairwell. The huge chunk of packed earth slams into him instead, driving him face first under the water, crushing his chest. Muddy water flash floods the hall, churning and foaming, and slams into the door. It squeals closed on the stairs.

“Jason!” I yell, struggling to keep my face above water. “Jason!”

God, my chest hurts. It’s not the lack of breath. Filthy water gushes up over my head. I push off the door with my left leg, and slam into the steps. Unwilling to believe what just happened, the sacrifice my friend made for me, I drag myself up the stairs, out of the water.

I lie there, sobbing, clutching my leg and my aching chest while the flood reaches its height, and quickly recedes.

He can’t stay there, face down in the mud like that. Pain envelopes my leg. I force it to move, to work for me as I inch my way down the steps.

The pain in my chest slices further, deeper with every breath. The wound in my leg and the heartache cutting at me become the same pain. I’m a mass of misery, but I can’t give in. The corrugated metal door is bowed in, Jason’s legs visible past its battered edge. He’s not moving. But he could’ve held his breath. I cling to that hope and force the door open enough to weasel through.

He’s face down, eyes open and vacant, bloody foam leaking from his mouth and nose. A wedge of black earth jams into his back, forcing his shoulders apart at wrong angles to his spine, his hips twisted, legs still.

“Oh, God, Jason. Why?”