The Serophim Breach (The Serophim Breach Series) (30 page)

“Is all this related to your info?” she asked gruffly.

Gary considered her question for a moment and wondered how Josie would suggest he answer. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders and answered, “Sort of.”

She held his gaze directly, openly, for one moment longer, before the deliberation ended.

“Follow me,” she said, and spun on her heel. Instantly, she was
click click click
ing away down the hall, and Gary jumped up, feeling a bit like a lapdog. A few jogging steps, and he was following at her heels, his arms wrapped protectively around the manila folder. People watched them pass without interest, phones pressed to their ears, their fingers moving deftly over keyboards. The first open room full of cubicles they passed through was filled with a sense of urgency tinged with competition. Carly hooked a quick left, and they were in a short hallway lined with offices. She stopped short at the third door on their right and pushed it open.

“After you,” she said with a gesture.

He sank into the uncomfortable leather chair angled across from where she moved to sit and considered how best to start. She eyed him, the look both curious and wary.

“So, you know something about the blackout?” she asked after he didn’t make the first move.

Gary nodded, mutely pulling his wallet from his back pocket. He set his driver’s license on the table, tapping it near the corner where it said “State of Hawaii.” Next, he laid down the plane ticket stub, thinking she might soften a bit if she realized he had just recently been on the island in question. The look on her face told him she was unimpressed.

Feeling his confidence waver, he opened the envelope and laid out the papers and photos on her desk. She circled around behind him quietly, watching as he worked.

“What is all this?” she asked.

He ignored her and continued with the arrangement. Finally, he handed her the CD on which Josie had copied the video of the test animals.

“Watch this,” was all he said, settling back into the chair. He knew if he tried to explain what was going on, he would be greeted with disbelief and likely tossed out before he could convince her of anything. She would need to watch the video, as he had, in order to make everything else seem plausible. Still, he felt the nerves beginning to tighten in his gut, and he tapped his foot on the floor nervously.

Carly furrowed her brows at him, but slipped the disk into her computer and plopped down into her chair. The video started with Josie’s voice, and Gary watched the reporter’s face carefully.

“What is this? A lab?” She squinted and leaned forward toward the screen.

Gary remained silent as the video continued to play. Carly glanced at him once more, meeting his eyes briefly before she turned back to the monitor. He heard the sound of Josie walking into the lab, and her voice once again over the speakers. And then the eruption of snarls and violence made Carly leap back into her chair and lift a hand to her throat.

“Holy—” she gasped, her eyes riveted to the screen. He let the video finish, and Carly caught her breath before she turned to look at him.

“That has a connection to the power outage in Hawaii?” she asked breathlessly.

He nodded, and watched as the mask of composure slid back over her sculpted features. Finally, she grabbed a pen and paper and said, “Tell me everything you know.”

~

When Sarah awoke, her head was still swimming and she felt groggy, as though she had slept for too long. She groaned and pushed herself up in the seat, only then realizing that Heather had her in her arms and her head was resting on the older girl’s chest. Embarrassed, she rubbed her eyes and glanced at the clock, surprised that she had only been out for thirty minutes or so; looking around, she found that they were moving slowly down a four-lane road she did not recognize.

“We’d probably get there faster if we were walking,” Mike joked as he steered the sedan around a cluster of parked cars. His voice was tired, rough after being silent for so long. Heather smiled weakly back at her dad, and Sarah followed her lead.

The night air whistled in through the jagged hole in the windshield, and she shuddered. For a brief moment, she had been able to push the last few hours out of her mind. As the images resurfaced at the edges of her mind, she turned her bleary eyes to the streets that lay before them.

With the car’s headlights off, she couldn’t see far, and it was difficult to decide if the effort of watching out the window was worth it. Her foggy mind called up the memories of getting scuba qualified with her father a few years earlier: each time they had started at the beach and headed out to a dive spot, she was the only one in the group to swim out on her stomach. The others obeyed their early lessons and kicked out on their backs, relieving the cumbersome weight of the gear. But Sarah couldn’t stand the feeling of exposure; the rational voice in her head told her it would make no real difference if she saw a giant shark appear from the depths, mouth open, eyes rolled back. But still . . . it would be better to see it coming. So she watched out the window, peering into the night. Dark outlines passed her window slowly: abandoned cars, some with their headlights still on; most of the display windows they passed had been shattered, the goods inside taken or destroyed, the violence of their appearance in stark contrast with the empty, quiet streets.

Sarah hunkered down in the seat, shifting away from where the wind blew into the car, and realized the car they had taken smelled odd; a sickly sweet, almost medicinal scent stuck to the cherry red upholstery. The gash in the front of the bench seat seemed strange, the rough edges of the material chafing her calves as she tried to get comfortable.

“Should I turn on the radio?” Heather asked, breaking the silence. “Maybe the emergency message has been updated.”

“Sure,” Mike answered, his eyes squinting as he watched the dark road in front of them. “Just have one hand on the volume . . . we don’t know what they left it on.”

Sarah peeled her gaze away from the window as Heather reached forward with both hands, one ready to turn the volume knob and the other pressing the power switch. The buttons lit, and static hissed to life over the speakers. She rolled the knob so the sound was less imposing, and started scanning through the stations.

“Will an emergency broadcast be on AM or FM?” Sarah asked.

“I think it broadcasts on both,” Mike answered, but he looked unsure.

They scanned through the FM frequencies once and heard nothing, but decided to scan again more slowly, just to be sure. Only static rattled out through the speakers.

As soon as Heather pressed the AM/FM button, a faint, buzzing voice picked up under the static.

“Wait! What’s that?” Sarah gasped, leaning forward.

They listened for a moment, but found they couldn’t make out what was being said. Heather changed the frequency, and the voice became clearer, so she moved the knob until a relatively clear emergency message was playing in the car.

—vised to stay in their homes if possible, or proceed to a local evacuation center if access to freeways has been closed off. The state government has recommended that residents drink only bottled water, and that wherever possible, use gas masks, respirators, or any available masks to guard against airborne contaminants.

The message cut out abruptly, replaced by a sound like the end of a film reel. They sat in silence, driving forward slowly, waiting for the message to start over. Seconds later, it began again:

This is an Emergency Broadcast Message, broadcast on all frequencies. This is not a test. The local government and military establishment have issued the following warning: The city of Honolulu and its surrounding areas have experienced an event of unknown origins. At this time, officials are citing possible terrorist activity, but further details are not yet apparent. Due to the lack of confirmed information, residents are advised to take all necessary precautions against physical, chemical, and biological attack. Military checkpoints have been established along all major freeways, and access to the following locations is closed: Honolulu, Halawa, Pearl Harbor, Hickam Air Force Base, Makakil City, Pearl City, and Mililani. Residents are advised to stay in their homes if possible, or proceed to a local evacuation center if access to freeways has been closed off. The state government has recommended that residents drink only bottled water, and that wherever possible, use gas masks, respirators, or any available masks to guard against airborne contaminants.

The message ended again, followed by the same flapping reel sound. Mike abruptly reached out to flip the radio off, and the car was once again quiet. A few seconds later, the freeway on-ramp came into view, barricaded by white and orange wooden blockades.

“How are we going to get to Mom if the freeway is closed?” Heather asked.

“We’ll take a back way,” Mike answered quietly. They drove past the on-ramp and continued on toward the hills. No one spoke as they turned onto a small two-lane road that wound along the base of the foothills and would eventually lead them back to the farm, and then on to Mike’s.

Once they left the city streets, Mike was able to push the car up to the normal speed limit; he flipped the headlights on, and the dark outlines outside melded together into an indistinguishable darkness. Sarah lost herself quickly in her own thoughts—blinking away tears, she wondered where her brothers were and how quickly they would follow to Mike’s. Her eyes ached with exhaustion, and she closed them briefly, her cheek resting against the sickly sweet-smelling door. The sound of raindrops hitting the windshield began,
tick tick tick, tick tick
, and she sank into a restless sleep again.

The next time she opened her eyes, the car had slowed again, and Mike was leaning forward over the steering wheel, his face tight with anxiety. Sarah shoved herself back into an upright position and saw that they had turned down a residential street. In the darkness ahead, she could see several people standing or kneeling on the sidewalk. Slowly, the headlights washed up over them, and she gasped.

A body lay on the sidewalk, curled up like it was trying to protect itself, too still to be alive. Around it, the other people were rooted to the spot, their eyes half-open and unseeing, their mouths hanging loose as if they were in some kind of trance. Their bodies had the soft look of utter relaxation, an ugly contrast to their swollen features and bloody clothes. Sarah counted three men and a woman, all with gaping, visible wounds on their faces, arms, or necks.

“Dad . . . should we stop?” Heather murmured.

Mike shook his head. “We have to get to the house,” he answered quietly. They turned around a corner, and Sarah watched as the grisly scene disappeared in the mirror. Shrinking back down into the seat, she remembered the jogger at her house—the strange, quiet position she had found him in downstairs, the way he had not responded to her presence, as if she had not been running straight through his field of vision. She shuddered, wondering what it meant.

They wound through the dark, abandoned streets for a few minutes until the car slowed again and Mike hung a quick right. Heather sat forward in her seat, eyes wide.

“Where are we?” Sarah whispered.

“It’s our street,” the older girl answered without looking at her, her voice thick with emotion.

It might have been a friendly-looking street of houses on any other night, with yellow light from streetlamps pooling on the asphalt, half-closed blinds revealing bright, cheerful family rooms. Instead, the neighborhood was illuminated by the light of flames devouring two of the homes that lay at the end of the cul-de-sac, sparks bursting into the air as parts of their roofs crumbled, only to be extinguished by the falling rain.

Heather couldn’t speak as Mike whipped the car into a driveway five houses away from the fires and growled, “Wait here.” Heather started to protest, but he had already shut the door, the rifle gripped firmly in his hand. He strode up to the door quickly, disappearing under the shadow of the porch. Sarah thought she saw him open the front door and move into the house.

“Is this your house?” she whispered.

Heather nodded curtly, her eyes locked on the darkness where her father had disappeared. They waited in silence, doing their best to ignore the flickering light that reflected in the windshield. Just when she thought she could stand the silence no longer, a shot rang out from inside the house. Silence followed, and then two more shots. Sarah sucked in a quick breath and looked to Heather, whose hands had shot up in a defensive gesture, her eyes wide and bright with fear. Heather’s mouth opened slightly, and her breathing became quick and shallow; suddenly her hand shot out to pull the lock on the passenger side door.

“Let’s go,” she hissed, her weight pushing against Sarah.

They tumbled out of the car and crouched against it, Heather moving around to stand in front of Sarah. Nothing moved around them except the light of the fire; the sound of the rain continued, impassive, unrelenting. Sarah kept her eyes on the darkness under the porch, where Mike had disappeared, willing her eyes to adjust. Suddenly, a hulking outline materialized, moving slowly, haltingly, out of the black.

Before Sarah could say a word, Heather had her pistol up and aimed. In a hard voice, she called out, “Dad?”

The figure didn’t answer, but continued to move slowly forward into the eerie dimness of the firelight. His eyes were almost closed, the lids fluttering as the rain splattered against his cheeks. The shirt he wore was nearly a rag, ripped at the collar so that it hung off one shoulder and dangled around his waist, covered in grime and blood. From his lower neck, down his chest, and along his right shoulder and arm, fresh blood was pumping freely from where the shotgun pellets had ripped into his flesh.

“Oh God,” Heather choked, but she kept her pistol sighted in. The man stumbled forward, a keening moan building in his throat. The blood pulsed down his torso, spreading down his pant legs and gathering in a puddle at his feet. Even in the firelight, Sarah could see the pallor creeping over his skin. When he opened his eyes, they lolled momentarily, and then focused on the girls. Instantly, he bared his teeth and hunkered down into a crouch, fingers hooked and working at the air.