The Select (49 page)

Quinn repressed a shudder and willed
her body to remain limp as his fingers moved to her throat and
began unbuttoning her blouse.

"You're too fine to waste without a
little taste. Ol' Kurt's gonna get some of you before you become a
french fry."

He opened her blouse and pushed up her
bra. Quinn locked a scream in her throat as his rough palm cupped
over her left breast and squeezed.

"Mmmm, they ain't big but any more
than a handful's wasted, right? C'mon, honey. Wake up. Ol' Kurt
wants you to know what's happening. He ain't into humping
corpses."

He leaned over her and began nuzzling
her neck as he unbuckled the belt on her slacks.

"Wish the hell you were wearing a
dress," he mumbled against the flesh of her throat.

Quinn couldn't take any more. She came
unglued. She opened her eyes and saw his ear an inch away from her
lips.

In a panic, she bit it.

She more than bit it. She locked her
teeth onto the earlobe and ground down with every ounce of strength
in her jaws. She grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt and held on,
rising off the couch with him as he reared up, howling in pain,
trying to beat her off. Despite the pounding impacts of the blows,
Quinn held on. Her rage and terror were in control now and refused
to allow her to let go. Finally, with a violent shove, he broke her
grasp and sent her sprawling against the console.

He leaned against the wall, groaning
in pain, blood running down his cheek and neck from under the hand
he had clasped over the side of his head.

"My ear! You bitch! You bit my fucking
ear!"

Quinn felt something soft in her
mouth. She spit, and gagged when she saw a bloody earlobe splat on
the counter. Thoughts of AIDS skittered fearfully across the
surface of her mind, but vanished in the urgent need to get out of
this place and away from this beast.

Quinn tried to dart past Kurt but she
wasn't quick enough. His hand caught her arm and he whipped her
around, sending her sprawling back onto the couch. He came toward
her with his right fist balled, his arm cocked, and murder in his
eyes.

"You just made the biggest fucking
mistake of your goddamn life!"

Quinn screamed and raised her arms to
protect herself, then gasped in shock as a familiar face appeared
over Kurt's shoulder.

*

Tim was pushing his legs as fast as he
thought they'd safely carry him—he couldn't afford to fall now—but
when he heard a faint, high-pitched scream that sounded like
Quinn's voice, he ditched all caution and broke into a tottering
jog.

He reached a door marked ELECTRONICS,
threw it open, and saw Kurt, the big blond son of a bitch who'd
punched him in the nose. His back was to Tim, but there was no
mistaking him. He was leaning over a woman on the couch. Her blouse
was pulled open, one breast was exposed, her mouth was all bloody,
and she was screaming.

Quinn!

Tim almost lost it then. Any other
time he would have leaped on Kurt's back and begun flailing away at
him, but he knew he hadn't the strength to do much more than annoy
him. Restraining himself, he uncapped one of the syringes in his
hands and slipped up behind Kurt. As he raised it over the exposed
back, he prayed this dose worked a little faster than the one he'd
emptied into Doris's pleural cavity. With a grunt of effort, he
drove it into Kurt's chest and pressed the plunger almost
immediately.

But the needle struck a rib and bent,
jamming the plunger. Kurt let out a howl and straightened up. He
whipped his right arm around as he turned, leading with his elbow.
Tim tried to duck but his reflexes weren't up to it yet. The flying
elbow caught him on the side of the head, sending him sprawling
against one of the consoles. The remaining syringes slipped from
his grasp as the room dimmed and wobbled.

"Well, I'll be damned!" Kurt said.
"Look who it is: the asshole from Ward C."

With the whiteness of his
rage-contorted face accentuated by the glistening crimson smear
painting his left ear and side of his neck, Kurt was a fearsome
sight as he closed in on Tim.

"You've got no idea how much I'm going
to love kicking your trouble-making ass!"

Tim looked around for the syringes and
spotted them on the floor by his feet. If he could get to one,
maybe he could inject Kurt in the belly. But as he reached down,
Kurt's right fist caught him with solid uppercut to the face that
knocked him to the floor. His vision swam and he lost sight of the
syringes, of Quinn, of everything but the berserk monster looming
over him.

*

For a few heartbeats, Quinn couldn't
move. One moment she'd been cowering on the couch, waiting to be
bludgeoned by Kurt's fists, the next Kurt was turning away from
her, and battering Tim.

Tim! He was down now, huddled against
the wall, virtually defenseless as Kurt began kicking him. She had
to do something.

As she rose from the couch, she
automatically tugged her bra down over her breasts, but she left
her blouse unbuttoned. She needed a weapon, something she could use
as a club—or a knife. She noticed a syringe dangling from the back
of Kurt's shirt. As she watched, it slipped from the fabric and
fell to the floor.

Quinn spotted a number of other
syringes scattered on the floor and her mind began to race.
Obviously Tim had brought them. He'd tried to inject Kurt with one.
What was in them? A sedative? A poison? Or...

...9574?

Of course!

She snatched a pair off the floor,
uncapped both, dropped into a crouch, and crept up behind Kurt
where he was viciously driving those big boots into Tim's slumped,
defenseless body.

"Stop it!" she screamed as she plunged
one of the needles to the hub into the back of his thigh and
emptied it.

It wasn't an intravenous injection,
but if nothing else it would stop him from kicking Tim.

Kurt grunted and lurched around,
clutching at the back of his thigh. Quinn tried to jab him with the
other needle but he took an off-balance swing at her and she had to
duck away.

And then she saw that the door was
wide open and the path to it was clear.

She ran.

"I'm going for help, Tim!" she shouted
as she passed him.

Tim lay slumped on the floor, a still,
bloodied form. She didn't know if he heard her or not, wasn't sure
he was still conscious—or even alive. A sick, cold anger added its
own power to the terror already fueling her feet. Kurt had hurt
Tim. She'd get him for that.

Heavy, pounding footsteps behind her
shattered her little fantasy and yanked her back into horrific
reality. She had a good lead on Kurt but she didn't know where she
was going. The elevator was out of the question.

The stairs! Where are the
stairs?

She lost a few steps as she slowed,
reading the signs on all the doors. And then she saw the EXIT sign.
She lost more ground pulling open the door, ground that Kurt did
not lose because he caught the door before it closed—

—
and he grabbed Quinn as
she reached the first landing.

He snagged her ankle and wrenched it
back and up, trying to topple her. Quinn clung to the railing with
her free hand and twisted around to look down at him. With the
blood oozing along the side of his neck and soaking into his
collar, and with a grin as triumphant as it was ferocious, Kurt
looked like an escaped lunatic. He had her now. He'd won. And there
was no hint of mercy or compassion to be found in the glacial blue
of his eyes. She was going to pay dearly for what she'd done to his
ear.

"No!" Quinn shouted and defended
herself with the only weapon she had. She stabbed at him with the
syringe, backhanded, blindly, squeezing the plunger as she struck.
It sank deep into his right eye socket.

Two things happened
immediately:

Quinn released the barrel and recoiled
in horror at the sight of the syringe jutting from Kurt's stunned,
horrified, agonized face.

Kurt released her ankle and his hands
darted toward his face.

They never made it. Both hands stopped
within inches of his face and remained there, fingers splayed,
trembling. His expression was a mixture of shock and dismay. The
tremor spread to the rest of his body as it shuddered and shook
like a fish on a hook. And then his body stiffened. Slowly he
teetered backward like a felled redwood and landed head first on
the steps behind and below him. With a sickening snap, his head
bent on his shoulders to very nearly a right angle. His body
shuddered once, then lay still.

Quinn stood trembling on the landing,
unsure of which way to turn, torn between running back to see if
Tim was all right and climbing the rest of the stairs to the lobby
to find Deputy Southworth.

She chose the latter. The only way to
save herself and Tim was to break through the Ingraham's iron shell
of security and drag in the outside world.

She just hoped the deputy was still
there.

*

Louis Verran was actually allowing
himself to relax. The subdued lighting of the lobby—they cut half
the switches after Science closed down for the day—lent it a quiet,
peaceful atmosphere. Almost like church.

Cleary's friend, Crawford, didn't
really know that much. He'd only heard snatches of Cleary's end of
the conversation on his car phone. And Verran had to hand it to Doc
Alston—he handled Southworth beautifully.

A bad moment came when Dr. Emerson
walked through the front doors. He looked dazed, like a guy in
shock. Almost looked as if he'd been crying.

"Walter," Alston said. "What on earth
are you doing here at this hour?"

But Emerson said nothing. He walked
past like a zombie, eyes straight ahead, on a beeline for the
elevators. Verran held his breath. Emerson was one of the faculty
members who knew the score at The Ingraham, but he was a bit too
unpredictable for Verran's liking.

But Emerson kept his mouth shut. He
stepped into the elevator and went up to Fifth.

And Verran vented another sigh of
relief.

"You see?" Alston said to Southworth
as the elevator doors closed behind Emerson. "I'm not the only
faculty member here at this hour.

"Fine," Southworth said, "but let me
get this straight: Mr. Verran called you in because Timothy Brown
had reappeared?"

"Not quite," Alston said
with exaggerated patience. "Louis does not 'call me in,' as it
were. He called to
inform
me that Mr. Brown had returned. I
decided
to come in to
see Mr. Brown for myself. As Director of Medical Education, I
thought it my duty to question him about his missed tests and
classes and to warn him of his imminent risk of failure. He wanted
to hear none of it. All he wanted was to collect Ms. Cleary and
take her skiing."

"I don't believe any of this,"
Crawford said.

Alston shrugged dramatically. "I don't
know what else I can tell you, young man. Mr. Brown returned,
picked up Ms. Cleary, and the two of them drove off together. I
certainly disapproved, but I had no power to stop them."

"Just when did Brown show up?"
Southworth asked.

"Just before midnight, Ted," Verran
said, jumping in. "I called Dr. Alston right away."

"And that would explain that fragment
you heard from your friend," Alston told Crawford. "About Tim being
here. That was what she meant. Your mutual friend had
returned."

"No," Crawford said, shaking his head.
"That doesn't hang together. Quinn said—"

Alston raised his hand.
"None of us can be sure what Ms. Cleary said.
You
were tired,
she
was tired and overwhelmed by her
friend's return. I suggest we all get a good night's sleep and
discuss this further in the morning."

Southworth looked at Crawford. The
deputy had been pretty quiet, soaking up everything in his usual
low-key way. No telling for sure what Southworth was thinking.
Ever.

He said, "I think Dr. Alston's got a
point there. I'll put out a bulletin on Brown's car and we'll wait
and see if they're picked up. Meanwhile, if you want to do
anything, try hanging around the airport and see if they show up
there."

Verran loved the idea but Crawford
didn't look too happy with it. Finally he gave a reluctant
shrug.

"All right. I'll try that. None of
this makes any sense, but if they're not here, I guess they're not
here."

Alston stepped forward and put a hand
on Crawford's shoulder, guiding him toward the doors as he
spoke.

"Don't you worry, young man. We'll
find them. The Frederick County Sheriff's Department is second to
none in its dedication and expertise. If your friends are still in
Maryland, they'll locate them. And if they contact The Ingraham, I
promise, you'll be the first to know."

That's it, Doc, Verran thought. Lay it
on thick. Say whatever you have to say, just get them the hell out
of here.