Feast (27 page)

As they neared the house, where a pitched battle between man and beast was taking place, Peter slapped the roof and shouted. “Stop here!”

The truck skidded to a stop. Kicked-up ash flowed over Peter as he jumped from the truck bed, and he ran toward where he saw his son fall.

One of the Chunta charged him, beating its chest, mouth open, teeth primed to sever meat and bones. Peter drew his revolver and leveled it at the monster’s head, but didn’t fire. “Feesa, friend!”

The creature slowed, but didn’t stop. Peter pointed toward Feesa, who had just cleared the shanty town. “Feesa, family!”

He lowered the weapon and the Chunta turned and saw Feesa, who was now calling out in a booming voice. The fight went out of the Rider and she rushed toward her incoming leader.

Peter dove down by the heaped up dead Chunta, looking for his son’s body, but all he found was an empty shirt hanging from exposed ribs. He yanked the shirt free, opening it wide. He didn’t see a single hole.

He’s not here.

He’s alive!

And then he heard his son’s voice from inside the house, quickly followed by Ella’s and a series of gunshots. Peter vaulted over the dead, took note of Mason’s mauled corpse, and sprinted for the open front door. The inside of the house was a mass of confusion, but no one in the rag-tag group looked like a threat. He heard loud feminine crying from the second floor and took the steps three at a time. At the top of the stairs, he turned toward the sound and nearly collapsed with relief when he saw Jakob clutching a sobbing Alia in his arms. They were both covered in blood, but sitting upright, the way people do when they’re not about to die.

Jakob whirled toward him, afraid at first and then desperate. “Dad! Upstairs! He has Anne!”

The sounds of a scuffle from the third floor, along with Jakob’s declaration, propelled Peter around the banister and up the next flight of steps, where he suspected he would find Ella, Anne and the man he should have killed with his own hands. It was a mistake he intended to correct.

36

Ella’s scientific mind sat in the backseat, buckled up and watched with familiar trepidation as her feral side took over.

Gunshots pounded her ears in the tight hallway. Wood splinted. A door was kicked in. Eddie had reached the third floor. And she wasn’t too far behind him, rounding the stairway’s corner. The door, its ruined knob and lock hanging limply, swung slowly closed. On the other side was Eddie, with her daughter, about to escape via the balcony.

And she wasn’t going to let that happen. As valuable as Anne was to the world, as much as she loved the girl, she would be damned before letting ExoGen have her. Even if it meant risking her daughter’s life.

The AK-47 in her hands was slick with the red sludge, and would be hard to aim reliably for more than a single round, but as long as she could see a quarter of Eddie’s body, she thought she could make the shot.
Aim for the legs,
she thought.
Take him down and then finish him off.

She struck the door with her shoulder, slamming it open.

The AK-47 came up, her finger started squeezing, but never finished.

The hallway was empty.

And then, the door pushed back.

The hard wood smashed into Ella’s side. Coupled with her speed, the impact sent her sprawling. She struck the frame of the open door, spun from the second blow and fell to the floor, losing her grip on the assault rifle. As the weapon slid across the unfinished wooden floor and struck the leg of a folding table covered in someone’s solitaire game, Ella spun around to the sound of footsteps.

Anne lay on the floor across the hall, unmoving, unconscious and maybe worse. Ella watched for a moment until she saw the girl’s chest rise and fall. It was a moment too long. Eddie descended on her.

He jabbed the rifle butt toward her forehead, going for the knockout blow. Ella rolled her head to the side. Rifle struck wood, and she struck back. Ella kicked up hard with her left leg, aiming for Kenyon’s crotch. He flinched back more than she was expecting, but the diversion still worked. While he was protecting his boys, Ella grasped hold of the assault rifle, slipped her finger around the trigger and pulled.

A spray of bullets buzzed past Kenyon’s face, chewing up the ceiling and knocking free a cloud of dust. She tried to angle the barrel toward him as the weapon continued to fire, and she nearly succeeded as he held it at bay with just one hand. She mashed the trigger down until the magazine went empty. Kenyon looked aghast for a moment—she’d nearly shot his head off—and then he just looked pissed.

Really pissed.

Ella tried to roll out of the way of his foot, but her body was too big a target. He caught her in the side, slamming the air from her lungs. She tried to kick back, but she wasn’t fast enough. His body dropped atop hers, straddling her.

She punched his wounded arm, eliciting a shout of pain, but he struck back, twice as hard, directly in the sternum. The blow compressed her chest, expelling the air from her lungs and flexing her ribs inward. There were two sharp cracks as ribs gave way, followed by a silent scream that had no air to give it voice.

All of Ella’s fight faded away in the wake of that one punch, perfectly placed with devastating force.

“You know I love you, right?” he asked, a hand around her neck.

Ella wheezed in a breath that was cut short by a sharp pain in her fractured chest.

“Always have. Well, not always, but since we met. Do you remember that day? It was Lawrence who introduced us. Me, the head of security. You, the prized geneticist who didn’t really want to be there, despite your role in fucking over the human race. Not that I mind, of course. I’m on board. My job was to watch you. To make sure you played nice. So I got you in bed. Gave me a reason to see you so much. Of course, it wasn’t just a ruse. Lawrence thought so. Commended me on it. But it was real, for me. Just like it was for you.”

Ella tried to speak, but she could only manage something that sounded like a whale call, as she attempted to suck in another breath. The pain in her chest kept her from breathing deeply enough to counteract the lack of oxygen in her lungs. She saw flecks of red and white, twisting in her vision. They’d have been pretty if not for the ominous message they brought: if she didn’t get enough oxygen soon, she was going to pass out. And then she
and
Anne would be at Kenyon’s mercy.

“Don’t worry about speaking. I know you’d deny it. You can pretend all you want. You can tell Peter that you never cared, that all the sex was fake, that you were thinking of him the whole time. But you and I will always know the truth, and it can be our truth again.”

He smiled and then punched her head. “You just need to sleep on it.”

Despite the pain, Ella couldn’t groan. Still couldn’t breathe. The weight of his body and the pain in her chest kept her from even considering taking action, even blocking his second punch, which he delivered to her forehead.

Her vision faded in and out, teetering on the fringe of unconsciousness.

She watched through blurry vision as his fist raised up again, then dropped like a hammer. But when it came down, something was attached to it.

“Get off her!”

Anne.

Awake and on the attack.

The weight on Ella’s body lifted away. Kenyon screamed in pain. She heard bodies tumbling. A moment later, Anne spit something on the floor. Kenyon stood above her, clutching his ear. Blood flowed between his fingers.

Beaten and breathless, Ella managed a chuckle.

The sound distracted Kenyon for just a second, but Anne took advantage of it, throwing herself at the man. But she wasn’t fast enough or strong enough. Eddie hopped out of the way and shoved, using Anne’s momentum against her. She slammed into the wall and fell to the floor. Not quite unconscious, but definitely out of the fight once more.

“You two are a real pair,” Kenyon growled. “You know what? Fuck it, Ella. I’m done trying to save you. If you want to live? And I mean really live? With your daughter? You know where to find us.”

He took hold of Anne’s shirt, lifted her off the floor and dragged her to the door. Her little feet thumped over the cracks in the floor, each bump taking her daughter further away. And as the girl’s limp feet bounced down the hall in time with the chop of the helicopter above, she knew she’d never see the girl again.

Ella wept as she dragged herself toward the hall. She lacked the strength to stand, and all the willpower in the world couldn’t overcome her injuries. She sagged to the floor when she reached the doorway, head turned toward the far end, where Eddie stood with Anne. He dropped her by the door at the end of the hallway and started working the lock. There was a deadbolt, two sliding locks and a padlock.

When he reached the padlock and failed to yank it free, Eddie started back down the hall. When something large outside exploded, he stepped over Ella without a second look or a taunt. He returned to the hallway with the AK-47 in hand. Then he walked to the end, shot the padlock off and discarded the weapon.

Eddie opened the door, grabbed hold of Anne once more and stepped out into the light of day. He looked back at Ella, shaking his head as she raked her fingers against the wall, pulling herself up in a last, desperate attempt to save Anne. “You know where we’ll be. And you’ll always be welcome.”

He looked up and started waving.

Ella took one slow step after another, moving down the hallway, toward Eddie. Toward the rifle. She tried to speak, to delay him, but she still had no voice. That she was mobile at all was miraculous.

The pounding pulse of a helicopter rotor roared down the hall. A tornado of air struck Ella head on, and it took all she had just to remain upright. If she went down again, she wouldn’t get back up.

Eddie reached up and caught a metal wire with a carabiner and a harness at the end. He looped the harness around his waist and legs, wincing as he used both arms. Locked in place, he picked up Anne again, holding her to his waist with one arm. Ella wanted to scream at him. To tell him to lock Anne in, too. But Anne’s safety wasn’t his primary concern. He was just trying to escape. To survive. Just like everyone else, but in his own screwed up way.

Ella reached out a hand as she took one step after another, resisting the rotor wash, fighting against her pain and closing the distance. Anne’s name squeaked out of her throat, but nothing could be heard over the thunderous chopper.

Eddie turned his back on her, eyes on the chopper above.

I’m going to lose her,
Ella thought.

And then the view changed. At first she thought her vision had gone screwy again, but then she focused and saw the body of a man charging down the hallway.

And not just any man—Peter.

“Kenyon!” Peter shouted, his voice cutting through the din.

Eddie spun around and dropped Anne, his reflexes guiding him to defend himself. But there was nothing he could do to stop the two hundred pounds of solid Marine barreling toward him. Peter struck Kenyon head on. The pair crashed through the wooden railing, sailed off the balcony and struck the greenhouse’s glass dome.

The impact knocked both men unconscious, and while Peter slid down the glass and out of view, Kenyon was lifted skyward like bait on the end of a fishing line. Ella bumbled to the end of the hall. Tried to pick up the AK-47, but lacked the strength to lift its slick body. When Anne groaned, she fell by the girl’s side and checked her over. Aside from a number of superficial wounds, she found nothing life-threatening.

“Was that Dad?” Anne asked, wincing as she sat up.

Ella crawled to the edge of the balcony and looked over the side. She expected to see Peter’s twisted body three stories down, but she found him lying just ten feet below, sprawled on top of the decontamination unit linking the house to the biodome.

He blinked and opened his eyes.

When he saw her looking down at him, he smiled. “You have terrible taste in men.”

“No shit,” she said.

Gunfire from around the farmhouse filled the air. It was joined by the rumbling thud of
Beastmaster
’s machine gun. The second Apache cruised past overhead, following the Black Hawk, as Eddie was reeled up by a winch. Bullets pinged off the fuselage until it was out of range. The two choppers rumbled away, headed north, and slowly faded from view.

“Do you think they’ll come back?” Anne asked, pushing herself up.

“No.” It was Jakob, standing in the doorway, covered in coagulation. Alia stood beside him, a blood soaked towel held against her cheek. “They don’t need to.”

“Why not?” Ella asked.

“Because,” Jakob said. “They know where we’re going.”