Pulse (17 page)

They slid in, checking the hallway for threats. Glass crunched underfoot. There was no one in sight. To their right was a long wall of mailboxes, to their left a communal area and leasing office.

“Second floor, just around the corner,” Chelsea said.

They took the stairs by the elevator.
Dom kept an eye behind them as Chelsea tapped on Nina’s door.

“Something’s wrong. The door is open.” She raised her handgun and pushed the door open while Dom pointed
his gun into the opening.

Ten feet into the living room Nina lay on her back, her chest heaving but otherwise motionless. A sickly, sour scent hit Dom. He gagged, taking a step back and putting the edge of his jacket against his nose.

Yellow sweat pooled around her onto the tiled floor. Circular, bloody wounds were all over her arms and legs where her skin was exposed. Her eyelids were red, veins darkening as they spiraled outward. The worms got her. Were they still in the apartment? What had happened?

Dom spotted a key bowl on an end table by Nina. A set of keys was still in
it. He kept his gun on her body as he went past Chelsea to pick them up. The closer he got, the more unbearable the scent. His eyes watered as he pocketed the keys.

Whatever happened to Nina, there was nothing they could do now.

They closed the door behind them. Chelsea’s expression was neutral. Dom didn’t say a thing about her friend. “We get outside and run straight for the truck. The nearest evac zone is only a ten minute drive away.”

He took her hand in his and gave it a
hard squeeze. “We’re going to make it.”

The guard's blood felt sticky on Adam's hands, almost dried but still a bit tacky. Marla was silent in the passenger’s side of his car, but he knew she was crying. He wanted to lick up her tears and cut her eyes out all at the same time.

Getting Marla didn’t go off without a hitch. Well, at first it did. He entered the lab and saw her. Two other techs were there. When she saw him she gasped.

“Dr. Baker! Are you okay? We heard there was a breach last night. Four guards dead. They didn’t get it under control until just a few hours ago. Burned every last parasite from the male host specimen
and
the bodies.”

“I’m okay,” he assured her. “I felt so sickened by the whole incident, I went to my office and collapsed from shock. But I’m fine now.”

“You…hey, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

Adam blinked. He wiped at his eyes and his fingers came away reddish. The hosts always had bloody eyes, a symptom of the parasite. He’d forgotten about it.

That’s when he raised his gun and killed both the techs. He shot Marla in the leg as she was trying to escape. The bullet only grazed her. Nothing she’d die from. They’d bandage it up later and she’d be fine.

But his hardships didn’t end there. Before Adam exited the lab, he saw a guard booking it down the hall. He turned to Marla. “Stay here. If you move a muscle, I’ll cut your fucking tongue out and make you eat it. Got it?” She answered with a single nod.

Adam decided on trying to play it cool to get the upper hand. He walked down the hallway and nodded as he approached. Casual. Be casual. "Just checking on some lab results. I’m Dr. Baker." He flashed his badge.

That's when the guard raised his gun and told Adam to lay face down on the floor.

Adam feigned kneeling and withdrew his gun. The guard hadn't expected it. Three bullets later and he was on the ground, blood pooling around his dead figure. Adam grabbed the guard's security card, weapons, and handcuffs, his hands glossing over hot, blood covered clothing. The coppery scent made him hungry and excited. The erection pressing against his pants, elicited by the raw violence of the encounter, felt better than anything he'd experienced before.

And Marla? Marla was crying, begging for her life as he made her gather up specimens and pack them in a case. He held the gun to her head as he watched her delete file after file of data on the parasite. It felt good to be in control of everyone around him. The gun made everything so much easier.

Guns were good. Guns made people he didn’t want around go away. He needed more of them, and as soon as possible.

Halfway to the parking garage, the hallway emergency lights began flashing. It meant the entire building was on red alert. Total shut down. Adam reveled in the thought of more idiotic soldiers being infected by the worms, by his brethren spreading it further.

The whole building was probably going to be infected before the night was over.

He shoved Marla into the front seat and handcuffed her
right hand to the door, taking a moment to breathe in her scent as he leaned over her to buckle her in. No sense in getting her killed in a car crash after coming this far.

After he peeled out of the parking garage, he headed straight for the airport only to find the state of Georgia had grounded all incoming and outgoing air travel. Part of him expected he wouldn't be flying, but not because air travel was restricted. He'd pictured something much more movie-like. That the government blocked his identification and credit cards, stopping him from flying. Or S.W.AT. was waiting.

Then the whole idea was bad. What was he thinking? He tried shaking the cobwebs out of his head. Stupid. Stupid fucking idea to take a plane. He caught his reflection in the rearview mirror. His eyes were indeed bloody, his complexion pallid, and he had a wildness about him that would alert airport security.

“Fuck!” he screamed, banging his hands against the steering wheel until they throbbed in pain. He pressed his body back against the seat and took in a ragged breath. It was difficult to make his body behave. “We’re driving, I guess.”

“Adam…”

“Shut your mouth, bitch. And it’s still Dr. Baker to you. At least until we start getting more friendly with each other.”

The sobs began and, since she wouldn’t stop, Adam removed his tie and shoved it in her mouth. Unlike the movies, it didn’t work. She spit it back out. He tied it tightly around her head instead, which seemed to work better.

He used the built in GPS in his car to make a route to Seattle. Instead of skirting around infected areas, he opted to go straight through them as all the traffic cameras showed lanes heading inward almost empty. Everyone was leaving. No one was going in.

After an hour of driving he needed to get gas. Before he pulled into the station he removed Marla’s gag and told her if she screamed or tried to get anyone’s attention, he’d kill anyone who saw.

“Not you, though. I’ll keep you around and make you
suffer
for trying.”

She did as he said. In fact, she behaved so well he took the time to go into the convenience store to buy snacks. He kept an eye on her the entire time as he gathered armfuls of chips and candy.
She never moved. Good girl.

Keeping his eyes down, he dumped the pile at the cash register and retrieved his wallet. But he’d noticed the cashier’s dark, tinted glasses.

“Kind of strange to wear sunglasses inside,” Adam remarked, clutching a fifty note in his hand.

“Transition lenses. I thought they’d be great, but after a while they never transitioned back. Can’t afford to get new ones though, since I lost my job and started working at this dump.”

When the new Adam wanted something, he got it. Adam smiled, reaching into his pants for his gun.

Marla cursed God for the first few hours. She cried. She tried reasoning with her capturer. She passed in and out of darkness from the pain in her leg, so unbearable at times she was sure she was on the verge of death. It was some terrible cosmic joke that she was so close to a cure when it was taken away from her.

She kept her eyes closed, unwilling to look at the man. How long until Dr. Baker killed her? How long until she bled out or died from infection?
Would he spread the infection to her? What would it feel like?

It wasn’t until he stopped the car at the gas station that she finally opened her eyes and looked at him. Or, more specifically, the cell phone in the console.

She’d been so disoriented and afraid before, she hadn’t done the one thing she knew how to do best; think. Analyze. When Dr. Baker told her to be quiet, she complied. All she needed to do was contact someone, anyone, and tell them where she was, to come save her…

The thought died there. Marla was as good as gone. No one would be able to save her. She didn’t know where she was or where she was going. Emergency services would undoubtedly be swamped with more pressing matters.

What she needed to do was tell someone about her work. Someone who could
do
something and fast. This wasn’t about her name in the books anymore. This wasn’t about proving her worth.

This was about saving humanity.

Marla waited until Dr. Baker was in the building to grab the cell phone. This time she thanked God it was still charged, that Dr. Baker hadn’t cuffed both her hands, that he left her alone. She kept perfectly still in case he was watching her from inside the store.

She tried calling Eskilson. It went straight to voicemail. She looked at the next number on his outgoing. It was to Barry. It rang and rang, finally going to voicemail. Marla didn’t h
ave time to keep trying people.

“Barry, this is Dr. Marla Ainsworth. I found a cure, but there is only one copy of my research in the flash drive in my second desk drawer. The password is Doom—I’m not jo
king. D-O-O-M. It works. It will save us. Baker has me hostage, he’s infected. Please, Barry, please make sure someone takes care of my cat…”

She heard a gunshot from the convenience store and hung up, placing the p
hone exactly where she found it, hoping Barry wasn’t dead. That she hadn’t wasted her last words for nothing.

For the first time in days Dom felt his spirit lift.

After they pulled onto the main drag leading to the middle school, the scene improved. Military vehicles and soldiers were at every block. Droves of people walked beside cars that made slow progress. The sun was setting, but they’d set up floodlights everywhere to ensure the path was bright.

Dom hated thinking of all the people stuck in their homes, like he’d been not long ago, wondering how they could escape. Seeing the infected outside and feeling like they were going to die. The sense of bleak hopelessness ate away at you quicker than you expected it to.

As the street became more congested it became impossible to drive. He gradually pulled the truck off to the side of the street. The people on foot were making far better time than they were anyway. He began pushing the truck door open, but Chelsea stopped him.

“Our guns?”

Dom looked at his shotgun and her handgun, then to the crowd outside. No one had any weapons that he could see. Either they didn’t have any—Seattle was a very liberal area—or they were keeping them hidden.
Dom didn’t want to part with the shotgun, but there wasn’t a good way to hide it. He worried other survivors would see it and attempt to take it. It wouldn’t take many of them to overwhelm him.

“We take the handguns. Hide it
in the pack, okay?”

She nodded.

They exited the car and joined the mass of nervous people making their way to the evac point. His pack bumped into people, who either snapped at him or were too afraid to say anything. The military guys had their guns on the ready, scanning the crowd.

They rounded a corner and saw a soldier manning a machine gun on a Humvee in the middle of the road. The road was a T, the middle school at its conjunction, and the blockade appeared to be a funneling point before people entered the school. A barricade had been set up, forcing people to exit their vehicles if they had one and go on foot. Dom was glad they’d dropped the truck earlier, because the military was paying extra close attention to vehicles that made it that far.

Behind the Humvee, two pathways had been created out of fences. They were narrow, only allowing lines two people wide to go in at a time.

The lights were blinding. Dogs were barking. Guns were pointed. Dom began to feel uneasy. He took Chelsea’s hand and followed behind a mother and daughter.

“Please walk slowly. When you arrive at Gate 1 you will be checked for signs of the parasite.” The soldier with the horn shouting commands stood near Gate 1, gesturing people through. “The buses will be arriving soon. When you reach Gate 2, you’ll be assigned a room to wait in at the middle school until further notice!”

The daughter in front of them started to cry. “Mom, I thought you said we were getting on the bus right away?”

She gripped her daughter’s coat, pulling her closer. “Shhh. It’s going to be okay.”

After being funneled into one of the pathways they arrived at Gate 1, which was actually just a wider, fenced off space with more soldiers and guys in hazmat suits. A coffee shop on the left side of the street looked like a makeshift headquarters where soldiers and other official looking people were set up.