The Serophim Breach (The Serophim Breach Series) (33 page)

“Kai, we can’t make it!” Jones screamed, but Kai ignored him and ran harder, shouting for them to do the same. The water stung his eyes as he searched desperately for the police station. The cries around them lifted louder and more frequently into the air, nearly sending him into a panic.

“There it is!” Kai wasn’t sure if Paul or Jones had shouted; he only knew that the sign ten feet in front of him read “Pearl City Police Station.” Farther ahead, the dark building sat gloomily in the dark, and between them and the front entrance were two hulking, snarling men. The first took off immediately, loping toward them at a steady pace. Kai could see the corded muscles in his shoulders tensed against the chill of the rain, as he wore no shirt. He was barefoot, and his right arm and torso were badly mangled. The ragged gash on his bicep looked like a bite, but the shreds of skin that hung loose around his hip, exposing bloodied muscle and bone, appeared to be some kind of gunshot wound. The man moved as if he felt neither.

“Don’t stop!” Kai bellowed into the wind and raised his bat. “They’re behind us!”

The distance between them closed with breathtaking speed, and within seconds he could hear the slurred jabbering the man uttered as he sprinted forward. Kai gave himself over to his instincts, the same that had cleared his mind and steadied his hand when he beat the jogger to death, feeling only the impact of the bat and the ache of his jaw clenched tight as he wound up. Slowing, Kai waited for the moment when the man would set his feet to pounce, and it was at that moment that he swung his bat around with crushing force into the attacker’s ear. The wooden bat split the crazed man’s cheek and sent him crashing to the concrete without so much as a whimper. Once he had fallen, he did not move again.

The second man had followed the first at a distance, watching their approach carefully with eyes that rolled grotesquely in swollen sockets. He looked as though he had been the loser of a bar fight, his face mashed and bloodied; up and down his legs, Kai could make out the same raw wounds like the first man had sustained on his arm. As his fellow collapsed, he continued forward without hesitation or reaction, his teeth bared like a rabid animal.

He leaped with a howl before Kai was expecting the move, and it was all Kai could do to keep himself from falling backward defensively onto the pavement. The other crashed into him with incredible force and slammed a fist into his neck ferociously. Kai grunted as needles of pain shot down his arm, and he nearly lost the grip on his bat. For a split second, he thought he might be lost, when suddenly the man flew away from him with a strange cry. Immediately, Kai realized that Jones had pulled the attacker off him and thrown him to the ground, where he was struggling to raise himself back to his feet and swiping at the group. Paul was beside him in the next moment, and he brought the tire iron down onto the attacker’s head without hesitation.

“Go!” Kai shouted. He could feel the pack closing in behind them, but didn’t dare to turn and look. In that instant, the yipping cries picked up again, confirming his fear. They were too close.

“
Go!
” he screamed, and they ran hard, eyes fixed on the entrance to the police station.

His heart sank as they passed the grassy knoll out in front. A body lay contorted on the ground, the sod nearby ripped up in chunks as though someone had struggled fiercely for a long time. It had probably been a man, judging by what was left of his clothes, but what was left of his face was now pulp, the meat of his arms and legs torn and pulled away from the bone in several places. Kai heard Jones retch, and he shouted for them to get inside, shoving against his friend’s back.

Another body blocked the sidewalk, this one a woman. She lay curled up in the fetal position, exposing the spot where her head had been caved in by some kind of blunt weapon. Her body was marked by bite wounds as well, although most looked older than the man’s somehow. Kai leaped over her, cringing inwardly, waiting for her to spring to life and snatch at his ankles.

He was only feet from the door when he realized that the glass had been knocked out of it and lay in shards at the base. Out of habit, he slammed his weight against the handle, but the door frame did not budge. It had been locked, but that safeguard had not held for long.

“Get inside!” he cried, motioning for the others to crouch under the handle through the empty space where the glass had been. Jones dove through instantly, followed by Paul and finally Kai. When his feet were under him again, he spun around to face the open doorway, knowing that it would only be seconds before the first attacker followed them in.

They waited in silence, realizing slowly that the eager cries had quieted. Still, Kai waited with his eyes on the door, sure that a figure would materialize in the mist. His pulse pounded in his ears. Finally, he heard Paul whispering his name.

“Kai!” his brother hissed again.

He turned to look, and his mouth dropped. A pile of bodies lay on the linoleum floor, strewn across one another, most with bullet-riddled torsos and gory head wounds.

“Oh my God,” Jones whispered.

Kai tore his eyes away from the carnage and scanned the dark room for any sign of life. Behind the pile of dead, he saw the holding cells. A few steps forward cleared his line of sight and revealed more still and silent figures lying haphazardly on the floor, the bench, or one another.

“Sarah,” he choked, rushing forward, forgetting the door. He threw his bat down and grabbed for the holding cell door, yanking it open so hard he nearly toppled over. He scrambled inside, rage and panic coursing through him as he began digging through the bloody pile, looking for any sign of his sister. Abruptly he found he could no longer hold in the overwhelming fear he had mastered for so many hours, and he screamed like an animal, collapsing to his knees. He heard nothing and saw only the bodies of men and women that littered the room.

When the cell door closed quietly behind him, he was unmoved, the last of his fear and fight draining from him as he cried for his sister, drowning beneath a wave of guilt and helpless fury. Some edge of his awareness heard the metallic click of a lock bolt sliding home, followed shortly by a quieter, more threatening click of a weapon being cocked. With nothing left but a throbbing ache in his chest and a raw, ragged dryness in his throat, he turned to face the muzzle of a pistol pointed directly at his head.

“Don’t! There’s nothing wrong with him!”

The voice that sounded like Paul’s finally broke through the sound of his own pulse in his ears and the agony that had momentarily threatened to suffocate him. He stared down the barrel at the man that held the weapon, trying to make sense of the sudden shift in his reality.

The armed man wore black utility gear that fit close to his huge frame; it was easy to see he was well muscled. His features were obscured by the dark, almost shoeshine black war paint he had smeared across his face and rubbed into his hair. The whites of his eyes were tiny slits that stood out against the rest of him, so dark he nearly blended into the night.

“Our sister was in here,” the voice like Paul’s continued, frightened. “She’s only fifteen.”

The man that held the gun grunted, but stepped back an inch to take the pressure of the muzzle off Kai’s chest, the fabric of his gear whispering against the bars of the cell.

“That so?” he said gruffly. “You’re going to want to tell this guy to be more careful with his behavior. It’s going to get him killed.”

In one abrupt motion, the man lowered and put the safety on his weapon, cocking his head to one side to study Kai, who was still unable to speak coherently. An urgent voice in the back of his mind told him it would be better for him to remain silent until he could express himself like a human being.

“What happened here?” Jones asked.

The man with the gun moved back to lean into a corner, his eyes moving every few seconds from Kai to the other two. Kai watched as he slung his weapon across his chest and fished into a front pocket to retrieve a wad of paper, which he deftly shoved between his lip and gums. When he realized they were all watching him, waiting for an answer, he lifted his shoulders in a gesture of futility.

“Hard to say. It was like this when we got here.”

The answer was short and final, like a gunshot. Kai knew immediately that they were being lied to.

“All of these people have been shot,” Kai responded quietly, finding his voice.

The armed man shrugged, shifting his weight to lean more heavily against the wall.

“You have to know something. Who are you?” Kai spat.

The armed man chuckled quietly.

“Gruden, these kids want to know what’s going on,” he said, raising his voice slightly. It was the first time that Kai heard the slight lilt in the man’s pronunciation that indicated he spoke a second language. As he considered the new information, another man walked out from the shadowy hallway to the right, and Kai thought that even in the light of day, the two would have been impossible to distinguish, one from the other, except that the one called Gruden looked to be slightly taller than his friend.

“I’m Nordec, by the way,” said the man who had threatened to kill him.

“Kai,” he offered. Immediately, he regretted the decision. Something changed in the men’s posture when he said his name, as if they recognized it. But that was impossible.

“These two your brothers?” Gruden asked.

Kai nodded.

“And your sister . . . was in here?” he continued.

Kai didn’t respond.

“Well, shit, man. That’s a shame.”

“What happened?” Kai asked through gritted teeth. The conviction that these men knew more than they were sharing dug deeply into his brain, threatening to break through at any moment.

Gruden watched him quietly, his eyes locked on Kai’s face.

“We’re in a bit of a predicament here,” he finally said, turning to face Paul and Jones. He stepped through the gore like a jaguar moving across tree branches, heading away from Kai.

In that instant, the realization that he was locked inside the cell hit Kai full force, and he swallowed hard. For the first time, the stench of death hanging in the air registered in his nostrils, and his stomach turned.

“There’s not much I’m looking to tell the casual passerby, but I would like to hear what you boys have seen out there tonight. So what say we make an exchange of sorts? You tell me where you’ve been and what you’ve encountered”—he looked back at Kai with a meaningful stare, only feet from his brother and friend—“how many of them; and I will tell you what I know about what happened here.”

From across the room, it was difficult to make out the details of his brother’s face. Kai could tell from his posture that he was nervous, but there was something more; he squinted, trying to make out Paul’s eyes. When he realized they were moving slowly, deliberately, from Kai’s face to the south wall, he carefully followed his brother’s prompt. There was a spray-painted message on the cinder blocks, he could see, but it was nearly indecipherable from where he knelt.

“Can I go sit?” he asked quietly. Nordec jerked his chin toward the bench in affirmation, and Kai moved carefully across the cell to an open spot on the bench, ignoring the two bodies splayed across it in either direction. The new angle allowed him to read the wall:

“Kai—to my house. All okay. Take WKTK, turn on KHON.”

The relief was a cold, chilling wave of ice that quenched the burning in his chest. His eyes welled up with tears, a cry of joy threatening to break out of him if he did not control it. But the alarm bells sounded, louder this time, in the back of his mind; the two men in the room with them oozed danger, and he knew there was a good chance they would already be dead if there wasn’t some kind of information they thought they could extract from him or from the others.

“We came from the hospital,” he said wearily, trying to match the dead sound of his voice from the moments before he had seen Mike’s scrawling on the wall. “We drove most of the way, and then our truck was stolen. The power’s out all over the island, and we saw some looters.”

Gruden was close enough to Paul to make the younger man lean backward in discomfort.

“We heard the barking,” he said in a no-nonsense tone. “Some of them followed you here, obviously. How many?”

“The dogs?” Kai bluffed, lining his voice with incredulity. “I didn’t pay much attention. I just figured there’s some loose pets or something.”

Gruden clucked his tongue several times and turned to face the holding cell.

“This won’t work with you lying. If you lie, I know you’re hiding something. And the only thing worth hiding, in this situation, is someone who’s got the bug.”

At that, Jones shifted his weight from one foot to the other, clearing his throat in an unconscious gesture of anxiety. Although Gruden did not turn to acknowledge it, Kai knew he had heard it and understood. His mind raced, trying to decide the best course of action.

“Okay, look—some people were chasing us, and they
were
barking . . . like a pack. We got scared and ran for the station, but they were really close. Why didn’t they follow us in?” He had decided to mix the truth with an attempt at redirecting the conversation, and momentarily it seemed to work. Gruden smiled, a row of ultrawhite teeth gleaming in the dark room. He spread his hands out, gesturing at the floor.

“They’re too smart to send anyone in anymore,” he responded. “Only took them seven times to figure it out. They tried the back door too, but they got the same result.”

Kai felt his brow furrow. It seemed impossible that the violent monsters he had encountered throughout the day would stop attacking for fear of being killed. It certainly had not deterred the second man outside to see his companion’s head bashed in.

He was preparing a response when a deep, agonized cry from outside interrupted their exchange. Leaping to his feet, he grabbed the bars and tried to position himself to see through the shattered door. Gruden and Nordec were both instantly alert, though neither moved. A few seconds passed, and then the same cry sounded.