Cure (16 page)

“
Who
did you tell?” Scott raised his eyebrow and stepped up to Foster, dwarfing him.

 “Miranda. An orderly screwed up and she got out of her cell. Reid’s been looking for her for hours and Nixon won’t let him stop until he gets her back.”

Scott clenched his teeth, reached under his coat, and pulled his pistol on Foster. “Tell me everything you know about what Nixon wants with Miranda.”

Foster grimaced. “Where do you want me to start?”

28
.

Two nurses stood on either side of the room and ushered the patients through the lobby. Nervous visitors spilled out as fast as the elevator could cycle them.

 “We have to take the stairs.” Billy clutched the photograph of Allison Zach gave him to help find her.

John chewed the side of his thumb and smeared his lower lip with blood. “I don’t think Frank can make five flights.”

Billy stepped inside the stairwell. “Frank, whadd’ya say?”

“I’m fine. If I can survive a pacemaker and quitting smoking, I can climb a few stairs.”

Billy shrugged and started the ascent.
How far had the others gotten?
He took the radio silence as a sign they hadn’t reached the ward, but they weren’t in the lobby so the diversion must have worked. The fire was out, but things were going smoothly.
Maybe too much so.
He wondered why Nixon continued the evacuation after the trucks had left. The closer he got to the fifth floor, the more nervous he became about security. The whole thing was starting to feel like a trap. If Allison was there, Nixon wouldn’t have left her unguarded. Billy stopped at the fourth floor landing and took the Bowie knife from the sheath on his leg.

“You two comin’?” Billy looked over the railing at John and Frank who were a flight behind.

“Frank needs a minute to catch his breath.” John twisted off the top and handed his water bottle to Frank.

Frank took a small sip, coughed, and cleared his throat. “I’m all right.” He pushed past John and resumed his climb.

Billy took the last flight two stairs at a time and waited by the fifth floor door. He looked through the window into the hall. Plastic sheeting hung from the ceilings and the floor was only partially tiled. A pile of countertops leaned against the wall, waiting for installation and the room across the hall appeared to be some kind of storage unit, piled high with medical equipment.

Not the kind of place to keep a patient, but he’d check.

“John, wait with Frank. I’ll look an’ see if Allison’s here. There’s a wheelchair in that room over there.”

John smirked. “Is it for Allison or Frank?”

Frank shoved John hard enough to knock him off his footing. “I can still kick your scrawny ass.” He opened the door and grabbed the wheelchair, using it to steady himself as he made his way down the rugged hallway terrain.

 Billy tightened his grip on the knife handle and zigzagged left to right, checking each of the rooms. Most were under construction, not a bed in them. Some weren’t even dry walled. “I’ve got a bad feelin’ about this.”

 “She’s not here,” John said.

Billy pushed aside the final plastic sheeting and groaned. Two beds sat side by side. They were freshly made and the room had been recently cleaned. A floral arrangement drooped on the windowsill and Billy read the card.
Get well soon. All my love, Zach.

“She ain’t here now, but she was.”

29
.

The three guards that apprehended Lenny escorted him to a rich suite of offices.

A slender, fifties-appearing man with graying hair and wearing a white lab coat folded his hands on the mahogany desktop.

Even riding out the diminished effects of his morning six-pack, Lenny recognized Dr. Nixon.

The largest guard forced Lenny to his knees and pulled his arms up and behind him.

Lenny’s shoulders ached under the strain. “What the hell’ve you done with my wife?”

Nixon shook his head. “Cuff him,” he said to the guard, “and go help the others with the search.”

Lenny tried to jerk free, but the too-tight cuffs on his wrists stopped him cold. The left cuff bit into his flesh and he yelped. “Let me go, goddammit.” A guard lifted him off his feet and thrust him into a chair, shackling his ankles to its legs. Lenny’s head swam, his equilibrium off from the alcohol.

Nixon lowered his eyebrows and concentrated on Lenny. “You remember me, don’t you?”

Lenny pushed his left arm down and tried without luck to re-seat the cuff. “I oughtta, you asshole. You promised my girls you’d make their mama better. Tol’ me not to worry about the bill, that you’d
take care of things
.”

 Nixon grinned. “That I did.
Leonard Holtz.
” He tapped his pointer finger on his temple. “See,
I
remember. Your wife, Annie, came in through the ER. Pretty woman, once you got past the bruises, black eye, and the fingerprints on her throat. She was on a ventilator for over a week and you came to see her once. You had the two little girls with you. Twins, aren’t they? Sweet kids, but dirty and God, you stunk of beer.” He whiffed the air. “I can smell it on you now.”

“Where’s Annie, you fuckin’ piece o’shit?”

A gurgling noise came from an adjacent bathroom, then a loud crash and a woman screaming.

Nixon stood up, buttoned his lab coat, and took a roll of duct tape from his top desk drawer. “What makes you think Annie’s here?” An evil grin spread across his face. “Maybe she had enough.” He headed toward the screams. “Is it really so hard to believe she would leave
you
?”

Lenny bowed his head
. Him, no, but she’d never leave the girls.

The tape ripped and the screaming stopped.

“That’s better.” Nixon emerged from the bathroom pushing a device that was a cross between a gurney and a hand truck. A plastic-coated pad covered a wheeled, metal frame and a series of straps held an ill-appearing woman in place.
Allison.
He recognized her from the picture Zach had passed around.

Allison struggled with the sleeves of the straight jacket securing her arms across her chest. Buckles scraped the metal frame. An opaque film covered her eyes and her skin was an off-shade, dusky and nearly blue. Nixon took a syringe from his lab coat pocket, lifted the hem of Allison’s gown, and injected her bare thigh. Her lids fluttered then closed.

Lenny shivered. He’d never seen anything like her.

Nixon parked the cart near enough to Lenny that he could smell death leaching from Allison’s pores. He wrinkled his nose and turned his face away.

Nixon sank into the soft, leather chair and grinned. “Do you recognize this woman?”

Lenny attempted to play stupid. “I don’t know her. I told ya, I’m looking fer Annie.”

“Oh, then I guess introductions are in order. I’m sorry. Lenny, meet Allison Keller. Allison, say hello to Lenny.” Allison groaned. “The sedatives don’t exactly make her a conversationalist, do they?” Nixon laughed. “You know her husband, Zach?” He drew his eyebrows together and tilted his head.

Lenny pressed his lips into a thin line.
No way was he answering.

Nixon leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. “Loyalty is for the stupid or the weak, Lenny. You’re your own man and you have a family to take care of so which one are you, stupid or weak?”

“Neither.” Lenny said, returning an icy stare. “And I’m not yur fuckin’ pawn, neither.”

“Touché. You’re smarter than you look. You sense a deal coming and you’re not about to take it. Well, that’s just short sighted. I’m only going to ask you this once more. Do you know Zach Keller? Bear in mind that I already know the answer.”

Lenny clenched his teeth.

“Let me put it another way. You know Zach plans on walking out of here with
her
.” He pointed to Allison. “What I want to know is, are you’re willing to deliver
him
to walk out of here with Annie?”

* * * * *

Zach held the switches for the cells in his hands.

One push would release the Ids.

“This is a bad idea,” Foster said. “Everyone knows the fire was a diversion. If I didn’t recognize Zach standing at the elevator, Nixon would’ve had you by now. Get what you came for and leave. You don’t have to make things worse.”

“You know as well as I do that Nixon won’t let us out of here if he doesn’t have to,” Zach said. “We need to redirect his attention.”

Clarence pulled his knees to his chest and rested his head against them. His eyes closed and then opened, the white film coming back.

Travis kept vigil over him, but the treatment was failing. “We have to get him outta here. He needs help.”

Foster’s radio crackled to life.

Another of Nixon’s guards was calling on the security frequency. “Reid, come in. Do you hear me?”

Scott stared intently at the monitors. “Where the hell is he? You said he was down here.”

Shhhh.
Foster turned up the volume.

“This’s Reid and it better be important.”

The guard cleared his throat. “Nixon needs you to take care of a situation up on five.”

Billy, John, and Frank had gone to the fifth floor.

Zach held his anxiously nauseous stomach. He needed every set of available hands and if the three men he sent after Allison were caught, he might never find her.

If Nixon had moved her off-site, it almost didn’t matter.

“I can’t handle everything,” Reid said. “Tell Nixon his other problem is cornered in the Incinerator Room and I’m trying to get to it right now.”

He didn’t use Miranda’s name, but it had to be her.

After a few seconds of silence, the guard answered back. “He says to put Foster on her and get up here.”

“There.” Scott pointed at the screen. Reid stepped out into the hallway and headed for the elevator.

Zach zoomed in on him.
He doesn’t even realize we’re watching.

 “Foster, this is Reid. Answer your fuckin’ radio.”

Reid’s mouth moved in time with his voice over the two-way.

Foster held a finger to his lips, insisting the others be quiet. “This is Foster.”

“Where are you?” Reid picked his teeth with a piece of folded paper, ignoring the blood on his hands.

He lied. “I’m clearing out the last of the visitors on three.”

“Fire’s out, stupid. Nixon wants you in the Incinerator Room. Miranda climbed up in the ceiling, but if she comes down, you grab her and you call me. Do you hear?”

 “Roger that. I’m on my way.” Foster clipped the handset to his belt and made sure it wasn’t transmitting. “
Please
get Miranda and go. I’ll help in any way that I can.”

Zach waited until Reid was in the elevator and the door closed behind him. He looked over his shoulder at Scott who gave him a nod. “It’s not only Miranda we’re after,” he said and before Foster could stop him, he threw the switches.

The cell doors popped open and the restless pack of infected men shambled into the hallway.

30
.

“What do we do now?” John asked.

Frank sat on the windowsill reading the note card from Allison’s flowers. He dialed Zach’s cell and when the call went to voicemail, tried reaching him by radio. “He’s not answering. I say we go back to the van.”

“I agree with Frank.” John’s stare darted nervously between Frank and the doorway.

“You would,” Billy said, leaning into the hall.

“It’s not like that. We can’t check every bed for Allison. We need to talk to Zach, find out where else she might be.” An elevator chimed and John jumped. “Someone’s coming.”

Billy peered around the corner. Paint buckets spanned the walkway and plastic sheeting made it impossible to see more than a few feet. “I don’t see anythin’.” A propped up broom fell over and a black boot came into view.
Then a tattooed arm.
“Shit, it’s Reid.”

Reid fidgeted with his two-way.

“Frank, get in the chair,” John said.

“I’m not an invalid.”

“Frank, cut it out.” Billy ran over and shoved Frank into the seat.

“We can’t take the wheelchair down stairs.” Frank promptly stood up, though the struggle winded him.

“Then we hafta go.” Billy was the first one out and he barely looked over his shoulder as he darted into Reid’s sightline. He hurtled a case of tile and heard Frank wheezing behind him.

“Come on, hurry.” John pushed Frank along.

“I’m moving as fast as I can.”

Billy took a sharp right turn between two sheets of plastic and headed for a taped off stairwell. He tore the yellow ‘caution’ streamers and threw the door open. He considered letting Frank and John take the fall, but changed his mind mid-stride. “This way, come on.”

“I’m going to kill you all.” Reid shouted, nearly catching John twice.

“Frank, hurry up.” John urged him forward, but Frank didn’t move any faster.

The old man’s face was turning blue. He coughed and sputtered.

“Shit.” John grabbed a nail gun that was plugged into an outlet. He fired several shots and Reid careened left and right, skillfully missing them.

“God damn pieces of shit!” Reid gained speed.

John toppled a chair, tripping him up before he could get to Frank.

Billy’s pulse pounded and he banged his hand on the jamb. “Frank, come on, over here.” He picked up a chunk of wood from the scrap pile.

Frank limped into the stairwell with John close behind him. Billy slammed the door in Reid’s face and kicked the wedge under it.

* * * * *

The crowd of Ids staggered away from the Control Room, moving in a confused pack. Scott held his breath for a moment, waiting for the coast to be clear to Miranda. “How much time do we have to get Miranda out of here?”

Foster frowned. “Not as long as we need.”