Ripper (44 page)

The Security Department had lost the first round with Lawrence Ambrose’s chemically improved soldiers, with four security personnel dead and level seventeen lost.

*   *   *

On level eight, Niles stopped to get some air into his lungs. It was right about then that he regretted excusing all officers and supervisors from the intramural activities such as the football game they
watched just three days ago. As he sat down on one of the steel risers to catch his breath, he was soon joined by the other two scientists that could have used a prescription for exercise as both Pete and Charlie virtually collapsed on the steps just below him.

“Did you hear that gunfire a minute ago?” Charlie asked as he leaned against the sealed elevator tube that ran along the stairwell. “That
was a serious firefight.”

“I wouldn’t know a serious one from two gang members banging it out on a street corner,” Pete said as he reached up on his chest and felt his racing heart.

“Pete, why is Europa off-line? The warning lights have stopped and she hasn’t made any announcements about the evacuation since we started back up the stairs.”

Pete managed to look up at the director. They were
all soaked with sweat because one of Europa’s last commands was to shut down the air conditioning systems because of the threat of spreading the contaminate to other levels.

“When the intruder alarm was sounded, Europa had programming instructions to shut down everything so she cannot be compromised by the intruders. A serious programming error by yours truly I’m afraid. I just couldn’t fathom
any scenario where I could not override any of her protocols.” Pete looked away. “I’m sorry.”

Niles reached down and patted Pete on the back as he rose from the stair he had been resting on.

“Well, that’s another reason for returning to the office level. You can get her going once you reach the computer center, right?”

“You bet I can, as long as nothing interferes once we get there.”

The white-haired
Charlie Ellenshaw was still leaning against the steel and plastic tube of one of the eighteen different elevator shafts when he thought he felt something inside of the sealed tube the elevators rode on with compressed air. He removed his glasses and tried not to breathe for a moment as he listened. He shushed Niles and Pete as he placed his ear closer to the tube.

“Pete, Europa shut down everything
you said?”

Pete saw what Ellenshaw was doing and nodded his head. “The elevators were the first thing cut off after the intruder alarm sounded, Charlie.”

Ellenshaw leaned back onto the stairwell. “Uh, maybe we better get to the next level because something seems to be coming this way—it’s noisy and very much in a hurry.”

Pete placed his ear to the tube and listened as Charlie shot up a few
steps, took Niles by the arm, and started pushing him up the remaining stairs. As Golding listened he could hear grunting coming through the round tube that activated the elevator system just like an everyday drive-through bank deposit tube. His eyes widened when he heard the impact of something as it traveled upward. Pete wondered if something was in the tube but didn’t wait for an answer as his
frightened imagination produced any number of possibilities after Captain Everett’s description of the nightmare in Mexico. He started running after Niles and Charlie.

“Oh, this is bad,” Pete said as he tried to catch up with the suddenly fast-moving director and cryptozoologist.

*   *   *

Virginia, Mendenhall, Gloria, and Sarah were having the same problems getting down to level thirty-four
where they could evacuate. Sarah was just now getting her senses back and refused to slow the others down. She leaned against the stairwell wall and wiped the last of her bleeding wound to the top of her head away. Virginia again ripped part of her lab coat to dab at the large cut in Sarah’s scalp.

“Girl, you’re not doing too well the last few days, are you?” Virginia said, trying not to hurt
the small geologist anymore than needed.

Sarah looked up with her swollen and blackened eyes and touched the large gash on her cheek. “I have had far better weeks.”

“Sarah, is what you said about the colonel true?” Will asked as he placed an arm around the still-sobbing Gloria Bannister.

“I don’t know Will. When I was taken Jack was still alive, but these men are ruthless.”

“Do you think you
can get to level thirty-four from here?” Mendenhall asked as he pulled Gloria’s arms from around him where she had been holding on to him with a death grip.

Sarah and Virginia looked at him at the same time. Sarah removed the blood-stained rag from Virginia’s hand and glared at Will.

“We’ve already been separated from everyone else, and in case you didn’t hear what I heard, Carl has his hands
full up on seventeen. So consider that if you want to get yourself into the fight, because we’re going to go with you if you attempt to leave. We follow orders remember?”

From somewhere high above them they heard a crash and a moment later several large chunks of plastic and concrete flew past them on the stairwell. Each person standing on the stairs ventured to look up into the darkness over
their heads. That was when they heard loud, very heavy footsteps on the steel steps several levels up.

“What in the hell is that?” Virginia asked out loud.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like kids playing on the stairs,” Sarah said as she tried to penetrate the darkness with her damaged eyes.

Suddenly the stairwell was filled with an animalistic roar that reverberated off the concrete
walls. The sound vibrated the steel stairs beneath their feet and shook the handrails.

“Oh, shit,” Will hissed as he started pushing the women before him down the stairs. “I’ve heard that before and I didn’t like it much then either!”

The four people started their flight down the stairs and just hoped beyond reason that unlike the regular elevators, the cargo elevator was up and working.

That
was when the lights went out.

*   *   *

As Everett and nine men ran upward after being cut off by two of Smith’s enraged giants, he heard something breaking into the elevator tube on seventeen that was even more terrifying than the roars, laughter, and screams of the transformed men. He called a halt to their flight so he could listen more clearly. His men came to a stop and immediately went
into a defensive position with weapons aimed up and down the semidark stairwell. Everett leaned over and placed a hand on the steel tube, feeling the shocks from the blows and then something else—the steady thump of something that sounded as if it were running, or worse, climbing or descending the tube itself. He leaned back and looked at a marine gunnery sergeant who had just spent two full tours
overseas, one in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan.

“I think the damn things are using the tubes to move around.”

The sergeant unzipped his body armor, lazily scratched his chest, and then looked from Everett to the tube and back again.

“Well, Cap’n, not knowing just what in the hell we have going on here is throwin’ a kink in my train of thought,” the old sergeant said as he reached out and
felt the tube himself. His eyes widened and he pulled the nylon glove on his right hand free and then touched the tube. “Damn,” he hissed.

“What we have here is what amounts to a genetic, or viral, experiment gone bonkers Gunny. One that’s damn hard to kill,” Everett said.

“Okay,” the sergeant said with a wry look at his squad of men around him.

“From what I learned, they can’t last that long.
The substance starts eating away at their brains if there was too much of the formula taken into their system. It was invented to be given out in light doses to soldiers to bolster their aggressiveness. It has properties that can open up the unused portions of a person’s brain.” Everett again felt the tube and realized that the movement inside was moving away from them, traveling farther down
into the complex. “But that in and of itself starts a fast process of something akin to brain cancer.”

“Some kind of super trooper, huh?” the gunnery sergeant said with a grin and shake of his head.

“Something like that,” answered Everett.

“Sounds like something the army needs,” quipped the gunnery sergeant.

“Hey!” came a shouted protest from farther up the stairwell.

“It feels like the movement
is heading down.”

“Yeah,” the gunnery sergeant said spitting a large stream of tobacco juice onto one of the steps, “but what about the fifteen other tubes inside the complex, Cap’n?”

Everett closed his eyes as the point the sergeant just made hit home.

“What kills these bastards, Cap’n?”

Everett looked around at his small band of men. “One hell of a lot of bullets,” he said in frustration,
noticing that his words didn’t have a very good effect on his men. “Head shots men. They can’t very damn well function if they have no brain.”

The men started shaking their heads in response to the captain.

The gunnery sergeant pulled the magazine from his M-14 and inserted a full thirty rounds. “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but we’re running low on ammo.”

“Yeah, and I don’t
think we’re going to run into Sergeant Sanchez with his assault packages before we run into more of these monsters. We’re heading in the wrong direction to get more bullets. It’s either make it down to level ten and resupply at the security office, or make a run to the main armory on thirty-two.”

Before the gunnery sergeant could say anything, they were caught completely off-guard when a loud
hollow-sounding bang came from the tube. A large dent appeared in the steel right where Everett had placed his hand. The men on the landing stepped back as another large dent appeared. The steel of the elevator tube was only an eighth of an inch thick and was standing up too well to the assault from the inside.

“Jesus,” the gunny said as he stood and backed away from the fifteen-foot-diameter
elevator shaft. “Whatever that is has been waiting right there, probably hearing every word we were saying.”

“I think it’s time we start fighting back and get our asses to the armory,” Everett said as he checked the remaining rounds in his Beretta. “I want something a little heavier than this cap pistol.”

“Then may I suggest we beat feet the hell out of here?” the marine said as he waved the
men farther up on the stairs to start back down.

“If they’re smart like the docs say, they may be able to cut us off. And if they’re real smart they will make it to the breaker boxes on each level. Smith will know we can’t fight in the dark without the right equipment.”

Suddenly the already-dim lighting in the stairwell went completely out, followed by the flash and start-up of the battery-powered
floods on each level. They were now almost totally in the dark.

“Well, I guess they’re real smart, Cap’n.”

Everett turned away and motioned downward as his squad started a headlong flight back down the stairs and into the darkness below.

*   *   *

The man once known as Smith had stayed the longest inside the cloud of Perdition’s Fire. He had inhaled deeply knowing that he and his men were
done for. In his mind-set he had quickly realized that he wouldn’t go down without a fight. Without regard to himself or his men, and needless to say the thought of the many lives inside the underground complex. He had been fully briefed by Hiram Vickers on the properties of Perdition’s Fire and knew exactly what it was he was in store for. He quickly figured he would rather go out this way than placing
a bullet into his own head as the Black rules of engagement called for.

As he had inhaled the toxic mixture of Perdition’s Fire he felt the burning as the mist penetrated his eyes, nose, and throat. At first he couldn’t catch his breath while all around him his four men writhed on the floor, covered in fog. He felt the dreamlike sensation of actually floating off the floor but also had the wherewithal
to realize he was still there, covered with the wetness of the mist. He had shaken his head when the effects started to take hold. He felt the bones in his body start to ache. The pain set in as the bones started their growth spurt, contracting the muscles around them like a vice grip. The marrow inside was reacting far faster than the tissue surrounding it. At the time he didn’t realize
it, but the section of brain that had lain dormant his entire life started firing on all cylinders, sending endorphins through his system to help expand those body parts that it felt were the weakest.

Smith remembered rolling over onto his back in sheer agony as the formula coursed through his system. He felt his clothing expand until his arms burst through the material. He felt the crunching
as bone met bone and cartilage was torn free from tissue. He felt his eyes bulge and his teeth separate. His body began to convulse even as his system started to heal itself. Even through the excruciating process Smith realized that Ambrose had not only hit on an aggressive formula of absolute mind control; he had hit on a miracle drug that made the expanded brain system produce chemicals that could
heal, escalating the natural process of blood clotting and bone marrow production. All this because for the first time in human history the key to unlocking the unused portion of a human brain had been introduced by pure chance by expanding the brain cells in the operating portion of the mind. With the correct and lighter dosage, Smith would have realized without the severe pain he was going through
that Ambrose had actually accomplished what he had started out to do. He would have created a soldier that not only was brighter, but could heal faster and take more punishment than a normal man would have been able to achieve on his own.

After the transformation was complete, there was the problem of clothing. His muscles and bodily tissue had expanded so much that his circulation was being
cut off and robbed of blood by the tightness of his clothes and boots. He remembered ripping free the vest, most of his shirt, and the waistband of his pants. His massive hands had torn through the laces of his boots until he could feel the cold floor beneath him. As he had risen from the mist covering the clean room floor, he felt free for the first time in his life. His mind was seeing and understanding
things he never realized possible. His vision was perfect. He could see shadows and knew that through the mist he could actually see his men around him. He felt so good he had to laugh at the newfound power he was feeling. He found he was near hysteria as his nose widened and flattened, expanding his nasal cavity to allow smells and odors to penetrate that he could never have smelled before.