RAGE (Descendants Saga (Crisis Sequence One)) (3 page)

The fire extinguisher tank
remains between me and the creature. It gets a hold on me, and my instincts take over. I know enough to use its momentum against it. I turn my body as it hits me, using the extinguisher tank to push it away. There comes a quick scrabbling of limbs, fingers trying to find purchase on me. Then the beast hurtles beyond me, inertia and my instinctive maneuver forcing it to stumble on by me.

I turn
after the creature and spray the extinguisher again. I scream in my fear and fury, but manage to choke it back a moment later. If this thing is blind at the moment, then I better not give it sound to focus upon.

Instead, I charge toward it, mustering my anger for the courage to attack. The extinguisher
is lightened somewhat by me spraying its contents all over the place, but it is still made of metal. I bring the tank down on its head like a sledge hammer.

No doubt, I hurt it. I imagine the pain such a blow would
cause me, if our roles were reversed. Unfortunately, it cares nothing at all for the pain. Undaunted, the creature rises and starts toward me again.

I pummel
it across the face with a backhanded blow. I feel something give way then, hear the muffled sound of cracking bone beneath flesh. It stumbles away and then turns back. It isn’t stopping.

Another swing
for a rock solid hit. The creature is disoriented now. Most likely, I do enough damage to its head so it can’t see or hear me now. Its movements are desperate, wanting to kill but unable to find its prey.

I raise the tank over my head and
then hurl it low at the creature’s legs. The extinguisher crashes into its shins. At least one of the bones shatters. The fiend goes down on its knees.

The adrenaline rush ha
s me shaking by now, my anger leading my actions more than my fear. I rush the creature, as it raises its head toward me again. Using my arm like a hook, I wrap it around the thing’s neck, getting behind it. I bring my other arm up to lock the hold and squeeze down with as much pressure as I can.

I
am only a teenager, but I am pretty strong. The doctors here in the Tombs show a particular interest in how strong I am. Holly mentioned it also, making me blush a little because she is still a young woman and very pretty.

Even these things
require air to breathe, and I am cutting off its supply. I squeeze harder and harder. My arm tingles numbly.

Then I hear my name being called softly in the dark.

“Jonathan, let go,” Holly says.

I open my eyes then. I
didn’t realize they were closed. Holly stands in the light from the door behind me. The monster in my arms is a limp body. The arms dangle. There is no movement, no breathing, nothing now.

I
’ve killed someone. It won’t be the last, but it is my first and I’ll never forget it. Probably because I am completely wrong. What happens next engraves the event in my mind.

I
release the monster, panting hard with blood on my arm from where I put the choke hold on. I walk over the body, vaguely aware my Johnny gown has come untied in the back during the struggle. My hind end feels a cool breeze. I just want to get out of this room with Holly as quickly as possible.

My bleary-eyed vision
begins to come back into focus. My ears ring after all the straining to choke the creature. I barely hear the movement behind me.

Pain. That’s what I realize before any other sensation. Then I
am forced down with weight on top of my back. I took hits before from tacklers, but it wasn’t the kind of mad rage this thing possesses.

I hear Holly scream once and then hear the shot.
A powder-flash lights up the room like a camera flash, followed by greater darkness after. I see something unexpected in that single brilliant moment—Holly with a pistol aimed right at me—but the flash forces my irises to constrict. I can’t see anything now.

Strange thing
is I am not dead. If I’m shot, I don’t feel it. I saw something like that in the movies and wonder if it might be the case that I am bleeding out already and my brain has not registered the fact.

Then Holly kneel
s next to me, urging me to get up. I notice then the weight of the ravenous person on my back is no longer there. I turn back to find the creature lying in the floor behind me. The light from the door reveals a single oozing hole in its forehead.

All I c
an think in that moment is,
what a shot?!

Holly hold
s the guard’s pistol. It fell out of his hand during the initial attack and skittered across the floor. The creature did not pick it up, and I did not think about it at the time.

I’m not sexist or anything, but I
am surprised Holly knows how to pull off a shot like this. Especially, in the dark. I am a fair gamer and have some paintball experience, but I doubt I could have done it. Okay, there is no way I could have done it, and definitely not while I am scared out of my mind.

“We have to get out of here,” Holly sa
ys.

“Wait a minute,” I sa
y, hopping over the body to the switches on the wall. I flip them on and illuminate the infirmary again with cool white, fluorescent lighting.

Holly and I survey the scene. The first obvious thing I notice
is blood everywhere on this end of the room. Between the assault I made with the fire extinguisher canister and the white powder sprayed haphazardly all over the place, the scene looks like a winter
murder
land. Holly’s Clint Eastwood style shot to the creature’s forehead is neat and clean by comparison.

I look at the guard. His name
is Charles. I heard the other guard calling him Chuck a lot. Between Charles’ open throat and the gruesome thing that killed him, there seems very little difference now.

This thing
is a person, just like Chuck, not like some monstrous shadow attacking in the dark. With the lights back on, I see we were attacked by a man. His hair was blonde once, though it is so matted with blood and filth now it is hard to tell.

He still wear
s an orange jumper. This is one of the victims from St. Mary’s. When Tom Kennedy changed into a monster version of himself, he attacked a number of hospital employees who tried to restrain him.

If this
disease really is some kind of virus, or biological weapon, then it makes sense his victims would become infected. I assumed, at the time when I was taken into Biohazard Containment, the doctors feared I might be infected by Tom because of the fight that landed us both in the hospital in the first place.

Now, two weeks later, n
othing ever happened to me—not that these doctors in the Tombs didn’t poke and prod me enough to find out. They probed me in places I don’t even like to think about, not to mention all the blood and urine and stool I was forced to give them for their tests.

Still, I fe
el fine, never better. I never became like Tom. I feel pretty sure, I’m not going to.

“How
did he get loose?” I ask Holly.

“Thank you, Jonathan,” she sa
ys.

I blink, turning to look at her. She
is wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. Holly holds the handgun in her other hand at her side.

“You saved my life,” she sa
ys.

Typical
what goes through my mind at this point. When I’m trapped inside a secret government facility, where they’ve done who-knows-what kinds of tests on me, and crazed zombies have just tried to kill me. I wonder if this pretty, young woman is about to kiss me.

She d
oesn’t.

However, she d
oes notice something I have forgotten about through all of this.

“Oh!” she sa
ys. “You might want to cover—”

I follow her line of sight to
the wide open back of my Johnny gown. “Whoa!” I say, hopping around to close the curtain and stop the show. “Sorry about that.”

She suppresse
s a little laugh, becoming all business again quickly. “We can’t stay here, Jonathan.”

“Do you think there are any more loose?” I ask.

“Hard to say,” she says. “No one has come in answer to the gunshots. That can’t be good.”

I push aside the
incessant alarm chime in my mind because of my near death experience with this infected hospital worker. It still resounds, though less so in the infirmary than out in the hall. As Holly notes, no one came to check on us in here. Either they don’t realize we are here—unlikely—or they are unable to get to us for some reason I don’t want to think about.

“Maybe we should stay in here and wait,” I offer. “At least we know there aren’t any
more in here.”

“We can’t,” she sa
ys.

I try clumsily to get my gown tied behind my back. I manage to wrap the lower half, but I c
an’t reach the ones that tie between my shoulder blades. I’m already embarrassed enough about accidentally exposing my backside to this young woman.

“Holly, I’m sorry. Do you think you could tie this for me
?”

“No problem,” she sa
ys, as I turn my back to her, making sure there is no gap at the bottom this time.

“Why can’t we stay in here,” I
ask, ready to make the case for locking the doors at both ends and waiting these things out until somebody comes to rescue us.

I only half register her gasp.

She holds the two sides of the gown open, not tying them together.

“What’s wrong?” I
ask, turning around.

She let
s go of the gown, taking a step away from me. Holly looks stricken. Instinctively, I glance down to the gun in her hand.

Holly sa
ys, “You’ve been bitten.”

From Russia with Love

1 Day Earlier

Vladimir Nesky arrives at SVR headquarters located in the South-Western Administrative Okrug in Moscow. Passing through an ID checkpoint without complication, he parks his new Mercedes-Benz S550 in one of the parking garages available. Stepping out of the car, he closes the door and raises the key fob close to his lips, speaking his private code word in Russian. The onboard computer in the car recognizes not only the word, but the particular characteristics of the voice giving it. The doors lock, and the alarm system activates.

He
glides through the garage level to the elevator that will lead him up into the Office of Operational Planning. Vladimir was requested by Mikhail Fradkov personally. He carries with him a priority one security clearance microchip embedded in the fat pad behind his left iliac crest. This chip is encoded to pair with his retinal pattern.

Vladimir
ascends in the elevator, wearing a custom fit Brioni Vanquish III in gunmetal gray, valued at $45,000. His dark dress shoes by Testoni are valued at better than half this amount. The Russian likes fine things, and he is willing to do what it takes to pay for them.

Risking his life on a regular basis certainly
does not seem an inconvenience to him. He is the best at what he does, and his superiors arrange for him to be paid exceptionally well for doing it. Why should he not enjoy the fruits of his labor, even if this usually means someone loses their life in the process?

A double harness h
olds his twin P220 Sig Sauers comfortably beneath his coat. They serve him well and remain his favorites. He almost feels naked without them tucked beneath his arms. They are perfect when Vladimir wants to get up close and personal with your marks. And a silenced .45 caliber weapon is nothing to sneeze at. He never uses more than one slug to the head, but he usually throws in a body shot gratis, just to be sure.

Vladimir
has done this sort of work for as long as he can remember. As a prepubescent boy, he was inducted into one of Russia’s eugenics programs. He left one of his country’s many orphanages and forcibly entered into service.

Over the next few years, he was conditioned to forget his given name. A number was assigned to him and it was by this number he responded during all of his training. Tests were conducted and drugs were administered. He became stronger and faster than w
as possible by natural processes.

All he kn
ows of the treatments he received is what he learned from a scientist years later. The man was one of his marks. Strange that his superiors would send him to kill a man who was present during the course of Vladimir’s training. Nevertheless, whether by oversight or miscalculation, it was the case.

Vladimir
recognized the scientist. He never knew his name during his time in the program. However, Doctor Emil Kurst, since retired, was attempting to defect to the United States.

Knowing this
as a rare opportunity for information he could obtain nowhere else, Vladimir took the man into custody first. Secreted away to an undisclosed location, he politely asked for everything the doctor knew about the program he was a part of years earlier.

At first
, Kurst remained unwilling to talk. However, Vladimir knew a hundred ways to make a person spill his most intimate secrets. After several tortuous hours of persuasion, Kurst told him everything he knew.

Satisfied with Dr. Kurst’s confession
, Vladimir let the doctor go. He still remembers Kurst’s face as he waved him out the door. The old man simply couldn’t believe it was over. He was going free. He even offered a half-hearted apology to Vladimir for his part in the experiments the boy had undergone.

Magnanimous, the Russian assassin accepted his apology, even shaking the man’s hand. Three days later, Kurst’s financial institution released the entirety of his savings to his new offshore account
. He purchased a ticket on a small passenger plane and left his home in Moscow for the last time.

Just as he took his first step onto the stair leading up to the hold of the
airplane, Vladimir killed him with a .50 caliber round to the head from his own Barrett M82A2 bullpup, fired from the shoulder at a distance of five hundred and fifty yards, using a Leupold Mark 4 scope. It was a beautiful shot. In Vladimir’s estimation, the old man deserved nothing but the best.

Of course, there
was no way in the world the good doctor was going to be allowed to defect. This had nothing at all to do with his involvement in Vladimir’s young life and the terrible rigors he had endured during that time. It was only because Kurst was determined to become a potential threat to his superiors. His execution had been set.

Once
Vladimir is set to purpose, he does not stop until the task is completed.

In a way, he fe
els the old man would be proud. In Vladimir, at least, his training produced as efficient a killing machine as they ever hoped for. What more appropriate way could the doctor leave this world than by the hand of his own creation?

What he learned from Kurst before his demise
was both remarkable and untraceable. Because the doctor was not executed inside some rundown tenement room tied to a chair, Vladimir’s interrogation was never suspected. After all, he did not leave a mark on the man’s body, during their talk. The doctor died in public, just as his superiors ordered.

Vladimir
did not know what they did to him during his youth, but it worked in conjunction with his pituitary gland coming to life at the beginning of adolescence. The way Kurst explained it; the pituitary turns on like an engine and begins to run all of the transformational processes that turn a young boy or girl into an adult. Hair growth, muscle growth and skeletal changes to increase height, etc.

The scientists working within the eugenics program Kurst
was attached to, and that Vladimir was a product of, used the pituitary as the engine to drive their protocols. Enhanced muscle growth, enhanced brain function and the ability to heal faster. If a normal person spent six weeks in a cast for a broken bone, he would only sacrifice one third of that time.

The old scientist
was even willing to tell Vladimir their research stemmed from a program in place while Adolf Hitler was in power in Germany. He nodded with interest, when the doctor told him. Now, he isn’t sure if he believes that much of it. In truth, while he was curious then. It doesn’t make much difference to him now.

Vladimir
isn’t bitter about the program but grateful for it. Otherwise, he would not be the successful man he is today. He would be a poor factory worker at best, or possibly would be sold in the slave trade. He smiles, thankful for his good fortune.

The elevator pause
s with only the slightest vibration. The door opens to an armed guard post and a single corridor beyond. He steps out and greets the two men by name. Vladimir is well known in this building. Still, that does not prevent Ivan and Danko from stepping between him and the x-ray scanner beyond.

They
are friendly, even chummy, watching as he steps to the retina scanner. The ID chip in his hip scans simultaneously. The light becomes green, and he is allowed to step through.

Vladimir
walks through the scanner. It shows Ivan a live view of the assassin and everything on his person. He sees the two Sig Sauers resting snugly in their harness, but neither guard says anything. As long as he is who he is supposed to be, they expect him to be armed.

A set of double doors open upon his approach, allowing him into the
Kill Box. Another set of identical doors stand on the opposite side. This small vestibule serves as a last layer of defense against intruders. The room is bare to look at, but Vladimir knows almost every sort of sensor imaginable is scanning him from beyond the walls. Facial recognition, approximate weight and height, even body odor and his heat pattern displayed on thermal imaging are on file and compared with what is found here.

If the variations
are too far out of range, backup scans are conducted. If the subject still doesn’t qualify, then the intruder finds out why this small, bare vestibule had been named the Kill Box. In this one room, you can be gassed with hydrogen cyanide, electrocuted, shot, or burned alive, depending upon the one controlling the system.

It
is the director’s call as to whether you leave this box alive, in the event the computer dings your scans. There are a few who never got out alive. However, to Vladimir’s knowledge, they never used any of the more extreme countermeasures. There are no scorch marks upon the walls or floor. That sort of thing is meant to handle an armed incursion, and no one has been that stupid, yet.

Vladimir
waits the customary thirty-two seconds it takes for the computers to conduct scans and send a report to the controller in charge of the doors. This person then follows up with a look at the scheduled arrivals. If he isn’t expected then he won’t getting in. A person doesn’t just show up at Operational Planning, or anywhere on the SVR compound, without being expected.

The doors part before him without so much as the click of a lock. Immediately the bustle of Operational Planning’s nerve center filter
s through to him. A great ring of computers fills the space ahead. Pods, each consisting of no less than six network specialists, make up the outer ring around a central nucleus. Here the Operations Chief and his advisory committee are seated.

Data coming in to the specialist pods from all over the world
is filtered and then sent inward to the Operations Chief, as necessary. At the moment, most of the pods appear to be sending in data regarding the same situation. That means something huge is going on somewhere in the world.

Walter Ivanovich, the current Operations Chief, spot
s Vladimir coming through the door and motions him over with a hand gesture. Ivanovich reports directly to Mikhail Fradkov. Even now, he is busy attempting to explain the data to someone on the phone—probably to Fradkov himself.

The entire chamber
is sealed behind transparent bulletproof Plexiglas called the membrane. Vladimir takes five steps forward from the Killing Box. The clear doors part and he strides through the membrane. The entire chamber has been dubbed the Cell. A well-oiled machine, functioning just like the cells in a body.

It
’s geeky, but appropriate. Vladimir has no idea where the metaphor comes from. Probably some doe-eyed intern coined the phrase years ago. It stuck. Everybody calls it the Cell from Fradkov on down the chain.

Hanging above
, at effective angles, sixty inch plasma screens encircle the nucleus. On each screen, different news broadcasts display. Vladimir notices, as he approaches Ivanovich and his team, scenes of violence and terror covered on every network.

Vladimir
might assume the images on the screen are from somewhere in the Middle East. People run through the streets. Panicked faces sweep past the reporters’ cameras. No one stands around to pose for their relatives and friends watching at home. None of these people want their fifteen seconds of fame in front of a news camera. They are too busy running for their lives.

A giant Ferris wheel
appears in the background now. The cameraman isn’t looking at it on purpose. The Millennium Wheel is just there, seen rising above what looks like an escalating conflict in the streets. On another screen, a news reporter stands with Big Ben towering behind him.

Ivanovich place
s the telephone receiver back on its base. All of the network lines are lit up with calls to the Cell. The Operations Chief looks like he has not slept in three days.

Vladimir
glances up at the monitors again and then back to Ivanovich. “London?” he asks.

The Operations Chief nod
s grimly.

Vladimir
doesn’t ask the obvious. He is here to get the explanation, so he waits.

“We have a pathogen—” Ivanovich beg
ins.

“Lethal?”

“Unclear,” he continues. “At least, not directly at this point. The public is unaware of the cause, but our agent inside MI6 has given us information as to its nature. A viral pathogen that destroys normal cognitive function, ramps up metabolic rate exponentially and produces a nearly constant rage state. The infected become ravenous and fearless. They attack, kill and even consume the uninfected. Victims who survive become infected carriers themselves.”

“How long is the gestation period,”
Vladimir asks, his eyes sweeping the screens again, taking in the panicked crowds.

“The pathogen appears to be spread through fluid transmission. Bites, meaning mucus to blood, or blood to blood contact. Victims become fully turned within twenty four hours
. That was almost two weeks ago. The latest data places most victims changing much earlier now, a few hours, or less in some cases.”

Vladimir
swallows hard. This is something out of science fiction nightmares. The assassin fears nothing. That instinct was driven from him long ago during his training. Still, this doesn’t mean he is completely detached from reality either. This is bad any way you look at it.