The Seven (19 page)

A loud rumble snapped Andy out of his reverie and he squinted down the road. A dark green Humvee was rolling toward town from the direction of the Home. It was the first military vehicle Andy had seen since he made it to the outskirts. The hummer took a right by the gas station and thundered up the road, past the main street, and to the outskirts north of town. The hummer took another right and disappeared from view as if it had gone down an inclined road that was hidden by a grassy knoll.

If Sarah was being held prisoner, it would make more sense to put her in a military installation than a civilian house. And, if he was going to screw up and sacrifice his queen too early in the match, he figured it would be better to take down the military base than to try to tear down the town. It would be heroic...in a stupid, get-blown-up-and-die sort of way.

There were guards in woodland gray camouflage and black berets about a hundred yards from Andy's present location. Between the edge of the woods where he currently hid and the town, there was nothing but scrub grass and pavement. There was no way he could make a run at them. He'd find himself riddled with bullet holes before he made twenty yards. If he angled away from the guards and headed toward the backyards of some of the houses at the edge of town, he'd leave himself exposed to anyone looking out their window. If anyone saw him, a lumbering behemoth in their backyard would inevitably lead to a phone call to authority figures, and then, most likely, guns.

Rocks and hard places, Andy thought. He thought about the class they had taken on strategies. A wizened professor with a face like a dried apple had been brought in to discuss the battle tactics of Alexander, Napoleon, Hannibal, and other great military minds. There, Andy had been instructed on the art of battle: Everything from tactical movements such as the Hammer-and-Anvil, the Chariot Vice, and Throwing Sand to Disguise the Blade, to the great battles such as Thermopylae, Waterloo, Omaha Beach, Midway, and Gettysburg. "Do something unexpected," the professor had told them. "A ruse, perhaps. Scare your opponents. Feint! That is the secret to finding a weak spot. Destroy your opponents' confidence. Make them think they've won and then go for the kill."

Andy dug into the dirt with his hands. His fingers, each easily three times a regular man's finger, plowed into the earth with the ease of a backhoe. He pulled up handfuls of black loam, wet and dark. He haphazardly smeared his face and body; he rubbed some in his hair. He waited for a few moments to allow the dirt to dry a bit, fanning it with a wide skunk cabbage leaf, and then it was show time.

He set his feet and put his hands on the trunk of a diseased elm at the edge of the woods. He pushed hard, feeling the surge of power through his core. The elm wavered; roots began to snap beneath his feet as they broke under the stress of being stretched. Suddenly, the elm gave way beneath his hands and fell straight, smashing into the ground. The guards immediately scrambled for their guns. Andy stumbled out of the trees like a drunk, staggering and reeling. He let out a loud, low, moaning wail and fell to his knees. The guards were advancing on him quickly, guns raised; one was already on his radio calling for help. Andy fell face first into the dirt and let his body go limp. In seconds, guards were swarming the area and several medics had arrived on the scene. A thick needle bored into the skin of his upper arm, piercing a vein, and then everything became light and filmy in his mind. He felt his breathing slow and everything went dark.

Andy woke up in a windowless hospital room lit by a droning fluorescent light. The room was a pale, sickly, industrial green color. The walls, the tiles, even the bed linens, all colored in institution green. There was no TV or radio in the room. There was nothing to tell him where he was. A small basket of plastic flowers sat on an end table next to a wooden bureau that was painted a dull off-white, but that was the only decoration in the room. Through a glass panel in the only door, he could see an armed guard standing at the ready. Andy had been strapped down to a metal table in the center of the room with polymer cables, each about as thick as a man's forearm. A few large-bore needles ran fluids into his arm from a hanging bag. There were EKG pads taped to his chest. Everything was quiet. There was no hustle in the hallway and there was utter silence. That meant it was time to make some noise.

Andy closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. Polymer cables held his wrists to the table, but his arms weren't strapped down otherwise. If he could get his arms free, he was confident that he could tear a new door in the hospital room. Andy inflated his chest, pushing against the cable across his chest and stomach. He tensed his thighs, feeling the cable there, too. He began to curl his hands toward his shoulders, feeling the hard, taut resistance of the bonds. His biceps began to burn and the cable across his chest began to bite into his skin. He relaxed for a second, grabbed another deep breath to inflate his lungs again and pulled. He repeated this several times, each time gaining a little more ground against the wrist cables. Finally, he pulled up hard, one last time, and neither he nor the cables broke, but he had succeeded in stretching the polymer until he could slip his massive fists out of the bonds. Once his hands were free, it was short work to stretch the other cables so that he could wriggle his way to the end of the table and out of the restraints entirely.

He was still naked, save for the king-sized hospital linens. Andy ripped the pads from his chest and slipped the needles out of his forearm. He quickly ransacked the bureau, finding a pair of navy blue sweatpants that looked like they'd initially been made for an elephant. He was able to slip into them with ease. The hooded sweatshirt that accompanied them was a little too small. Andy ripped the arms off, and then ripped slits down the sides from the underarm sections. He also had to rip the neck open. When he put it on, it stretched tightly over his torso, but it was better than being naked. He caught sight of himself in a mirror. Someone had bathed him, shaved the scrub from his cheeks and chin, and brushed his unruly red mop of hair.

The door to the room opened. Andy froze. A man in a military-style gray dress uniform walked into the room. Andy scanned the ribbon bars and hanging medals on the left side of the man's chest. He'd studied the American military; none of the colorful little rectangles were American medals. One looked like a Canadian medal, one of the many service crosses; another medal looked French, but Andy couldn't place it. The epaulets on the man's shoulders each had two stars. Whatever military he was in, he was a high ranking officer.

"Good afternoon, Subject One. It's nice to finally meet you. I am General Tucker, the executive officer of this installation. I'm glad the pants we found for you fit, at least. I'll try to have someone find a better shirt for you. If nothing else, I'll have someone sew you something. Please, have a seat back on the table and get comfortable."

Andy didn't move. He watched the man's eyes. There was no fear, no concern, despite the fact that he was standing before a genetic behemoth capable of tearing him in two with his bare hands. That fact didn't sit well with Andy. It meant the man knew something that Andy didn't.

"How did you know I was awake?"

Tucker smiled and pointed to the floral arrangement. "There is a camera in that basket. Also, the moment you began to strain against your restraints, your heart rate and adrenaline shot up to a point where a warning went off at the nurses' station down the hall. You have been under observation the entire time."

Andy felt like a deflated balloon. Of course they'd be watching him! Why wouldn't they? Andy was at a disadvantage. He was on the defensive, he needed to get on the attack. He took a different tack. "You know what I'm capable of, don't you?"

Tucker nodded. "Affirmative."

"So, why aren't you scared? How do you know I'm not going to tear apart this room? This hospital?"

"Because we have something you want: Your friend, Subject Two."

"Sarah."

"As you say. I am not here to argue semantics with experiments, regardless of what that experiment might think it can do to me. You took a risk coming back to this town. You might have been killed, you know that? You were one of the more risky experiments."

Andy drew himself up to his full height, which wasn't overly impressive, but when he folded his arms across his chest, there was a slight tearing sound as part of the sweatshirt gave way to his sheer, broad mass. "I'm not an experiment."

"As I said, I'm not here to argue. Why don't we take a walk?" Without waiting for an answer, General Tucker turned on his heel and walked out the door. The guard at the door snapped to attention and the general nodded and then turned the corner. He didn't look back to make sure Andy was following.

Andy hesitated. Part of him wanted to follow the general to see what he could learn, and because the general expected him to follow. The rebellious side of him wanted to stay in the hospital room, wait for a while, and then trash the place as only he knew how. Andy sighed and followed the general. As he walked, trailing the general by a few paces, his bare feet slapped against the cold tiles in the hallway, each one making a thunderous noise that seemed to tremble the corridor.

"Quite a step you have there," the general called out, not bothering to look over his shoulder. "The medics estimated your weight somewhere around eight hundred pounds. However, your body fat is at only 2.2 percent. That is amazing in and of itself. You are practically made of muscle." Tucker paused, as if waiting for a response. Andy kept his mouth closed. After a moment, Tucker baited him again. "I saw what you were able to do at the Home. Your strength is impressive."

"You should know. You did it to me," Andy said.

"Dr. Cormair's genetic enhancements surpassed our expectations, you know. We had anticipated you being about half as strong as you appear to be."

"Sorry to throw off your plans."

"Come with me; I want to show you something," Tucker said. He beckoned Andy with a finger but he still didn't look behind him. "I have a feeling you'll want to see this."

Andy followed the general into a gymnasium of sorts. A hard concrete floor was polished smooth and a couple of basketball hoops hung from the walls on either side of the building. There were no bleachers or lines on the floor and a set of double-doors on the far side was open to the outdoors. A gentle afternoon breeze blew in the room carrying the smell of mown hay from a nearby field and a square of sunlight slanted in through the door. General Tucker walked over to the door and took a deep breath. He still wouldn't look over his shoulder at Andy. Andy walked across the gym and stopped a few paces behind the general.

"You presented me with an interesting challenge, Brawn."

"Andy."

Tucker continued as though Andy hadn't spoken. "With the success of your genetic engineering, we now have the ability to create a human tank. Now, stopping your average man, that's not a problem. We have many tools that would allow us to stop an average man. A human tank, though---that's a new challenge entirely. Obviously, we wouldn't want to shoot you. That would be a great waste of resources. Bullets won't harm you enough to stop you. Sure, they'll hurt, but they won't stop you. They'll probably just make you angry. So, we need something that will allow us to take down a genetic experiment such as you without harming the experiment."

A wave of unease washed over Andy. He looked around the room for weapons. Other than the basketball hoops and backboards, there was nothing.

The general continued. "I was told that the medics that found you when you came out of the woods used a hypodermic needle filled with enough tranquilizers to drop a charging bull elephant. It kept you sedated for about five minutes. You started to come out of it and had to be immediately shot up with more tranquilizers. You have the ability to heal extremely quickly. That makes drugs a very inefficient way to prevent you from destroying whatever you choose to destroy, should you choose to destroy something."

"What's your point?" Anxiety was building in Andy's chest. He could sense what was coming.

Tucker turned and faced Andy. "Obviously, your strength poses an interesting problem. Those cables you stretched out in the infirmary have more than five times the strength of steel. Tying you up would be ludicrous, wouldn't it? You could snap the chains like they were licorice."

"Cut to the chase General, or else I'm going to walk."

"Precisely!" said Tucker, a smile appearing beneath his mustache. "That's exactly what I want you to do."

"Say what now?"

"Go out those doors."

"Why?"

"I have a platoon of my most elite soldiers stationed outside. They have a singular objective: Stop you without killing you. Have a good time." Tucker reached into his pocket and took out a flare. He popped the cap on the flare and red sparks began shooting from the top. With a nod to Andy, Tucker tossed the flare out the door and strode back across the gym to the doors where they entered. The doors shut behind Andy with an ominous thud.

Andy backed away from the open doors. He walked to the door that Tucker had just passed through and tried the knob. With his new, massive hands, the doorknob was hard to grip. The door was, of course, locked. Andy pulled on the knob and it ripped straight off the door leaving a hole surrounded by jagged edges. He slipped his index finger through the hole and pulled. The door tore open like a tuna can. Beyond the door, a thick wall of solid steel was blocking the corridor.

A speaker in the wall next to the door began to squawk with Tucker's voice. "What you see before you, Brawn, is nearly two feet of tested blast steel. The entire wall is made from it. It's meant to survive a direct hit from a mid-grade missile. If you try to force your way through it, I'm quite certain the skin and muscles on your hands will tear away before you succeed. Your bones would probably survive, but I doubt you're strong enough to keep punching as you bleed to death. The only way out is through the gauntlet beyond the doors. Good luck." The speaker clicked to static and then went silent.