Virus (26 page)

Foster opened her eyes wider, trying to clear her head. It was Richie, a grenade launcher in hand. She’d heard gunfire before, heard Steve’s voice, but she hadn’t been able to wake up.

Steve and Nadia were both in the room, alive, staring at Richie. Foster fought against the gray waves of dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her again, felt astonishment take over as she realized that Richie had come back. He tossed a knife to Nadia and motioned towards Foster, his voice strong and cool.

“Cut her down.”

Not so crazy after all . . .

Nadia moved towards her and clambered up on a console, started sawing at the cords that held her up, one arm around Foster’s waist. Foster stared at the fallen Goliath, crumpled against a support beam across the room. Richie stepped past it and helped Steve to his feet, talking fast.

“Let’s get outta here, man.”

Foster’s right arm came loose and she held on to the pipe, letting the simple ache of her strained muscles drive away the last of the gray as Nadia cut through the second cord and pulled away the cable. The other woman supported her as she slid to the floor and lowered her arms slowly, wincing. Angry red welts encircled both wrists and she leaned against Nadia, shaking, looking up—

—to see Goliath rise smoothly and grab the steel bracing support for the ceiling above the two men, its armature smoking and sparking.

Even as she opened her mouth to scream, the monster tore the brace away violently and slammed one mammoth arm into the decking.

Steve and Richie turned, Richie raising the grenade launcher as Steve ducked—

—and a ton of steel piping and debris crashed down over them. Dust billowed out and rubble spun across the room as Nadia tightened her grip around Foster, kept her from lunging towards them.

“Steve! Richie!”
Foster struggled, but Nadia was stronger than she was.

“They’re dead, there’s nothing we can do!” Nadia shouted. She pulled Foster to the door and Goliath was turning, rotating its torn and crackling body away from the huge pile of wreckage—

The two women ran and Goliath started after them through the dark.

Nadia kept a firm grip on Foster’s arm as they dashed through the corridor, her thoughts racing, Foster stumbling, obviously in shock from pain and the loss of her friends.

Seven, maybe eight minutes left, keep the creature running, find a way out.

It was impossible, there wasn’t enough time—but there wasn’t any alternative, either. Nadia pulled Foster along towards the stern, praying that the intelligence hadn’t welded any more doors; there were storage rooms ahead, maybe they could find more weapons.

The mammoth creature squealed behind them, close, the pound of its giant legs echoing through the darkness as the
Volkov
heaved against the rumbling storm.

They came to a bulkhead hatch and Nadia pushed Foster through and followed closely, her heart pounding. Together they slammed the watertight door and Nadia spun the hatch wheel. Through the inset window they could see the monster’s crashing blue energy, hear the furious electrical screeching of the intelligence inside as it stomped towards them.

The door wouldn’t hold out for more than a few seconds. Nadia grabbed Foster’s arm and they ran, Nadia trying to remember the layout—

—the locker!

Instead of continuing forward, Nadia stopped at the second hatch they passed and yanked it open. They scrambled through and Foster spun the hatch wheel.

There!

It was at the end of the smaller corridor; Nadia ran for it, pulling Foster, praying that something had been left behind by the deserting crewmen—and that the creature had lost them, at least for a few minutes.

She jerked open the hatch and they fell inside, panting. A single flickering bulb in the corner illuminated the tight compartment. Foster collapsed against the door as Nadia hurried to a cabinet and flung it open.

Relief crashed through her at the sight of the bright orange suits that hung from the rack. And behind them, a thick-barreled gun and three loads in a mounted case.

“Survival suits and a flare gun—Foster, we have a chance!”

A chance—but very little time . . .

She snatched up two of the heavily insulated jumpsuits and shoved one at Foster, who took it numbly, her face pale. For a moment Foster only stared at it, eyes shocked, unseeing—and then she dropped it on the deck and started to undress, pulling her stained fuchsia shirt over her head.

Nadia stripped off her wet sweatshirt and tossed it aside—then scooped up the tags that hung from her neck and touched them, felt a rueful smile tug at the corners of her mouth. Foster was losing her spirit, she could see it in the other woman’s eyes . . .

She took off the tags and held them out to Foster as the woman zipped up her suit.

“Alexi’s ID tags,” she said softly. “They brought me good luck.”

Foster took them, seemed to focus on them, her gaze sharpening back into reality. She nodded her thanks and Nadia turned away, climbing quickly into the suit and thinking about what Alexi had said to her in her unconscious dream.

Endgame—and she wouldn’t leave until she could be sure that her opponent had truly lost.

The workbench had been crushed beneath the hundreds of pounds of steel, but the braced legs had only buckled. Steve had missed a broken skull by about a quarter of an inch.

He clawed through the sharp, cold edges of the shattered decking, feeling blood trickle from over a dozen stinging wounds in his back and legs. He could feel a sharp pain in his left side, knew from experience that he’d broken a rib or two—but his injuries were minimal, considering. He struggled into the settling dust of the empty room, choking.

“Richie? Richie—!”

He saw Richie’s unmoving legs sticking out from beneath the pile of debris and his heart sank. He crawled over and started to clear away the rubble frantically, pushing at the chunks of decking as fast as he could manage. The creature had gone after the women, the detonator might still be ticking down—

—and this man may have died to help us; I have to be sure.

He pushed away a plank of light metal and Richie blinked up at him—bleeding but alive. Steve grinned, pulled at his shoulders to free him from the last of the debris—and stopped, staring.

A steel pipe jutted up from Richie’s chest, at least an inch in diameter. Steve reached under him gently and touched warm, sticky metal; Richie had been impaled. He wouldn’t,
couldn’t
survive.

He met Richie’s gaze, saw the question there—and shook his head, unable to lie to him.

“We all thought you deserted us,” Steve said softly.

“Shows you how smart I am,” Richie whispered. His voice was thick with blood. As he spoke, trickles of it coursed out of his mouth, but he struggled to say more, his eyes glassy with pain.

“I’m not such a bad guy,” he said weakly.

Steve shook his head, forced himself to smile. “No, Richie. You came back for us, you did good.”

Richie’s return smile was dreamy and sweet, and Steve felt a lump knot in his throat; it was almost over.

“Steve, there’s a . . . way off this ship. Get to the missile room.”

“Missile room?”

“C deck . . . and, Steve . . . kill that fuckin’ thing.”

Richie gasped once more, staring into Steve’s eyes—and died.

Steve reached out and shut Richie’s eyelids with one shaking hand, then stood up, forcing back tears; there was no time to mourn.

He backed away, took a deep breath—then turned and started to run, one hand pressed against his left side. He had to try and find Foster and Nadia before the creature did—and he had less than five minutes now to do it.

• 27 •

N
adia led them running through a labyrinth of corridors that she said would take them back to the filter bay. Foster could feel the seconds ticking away as they hurried through the dark.

“The ship’s going to go any second! Nadia, we’ve done all we can—”

“I’ve got to be sure!”

Foster knew she was right, but the thought of seeing Goliath again filled her with a terror so great that she couldn’t think straight. She hurt, body and soul, so deeply miserable and aching and afraid that it was all she could do to keep going. Not because of some brave, selfless desire to sacrifice herself for the good of humanity, she didn’t give a shit about the rest of the world anymore—she just knew that if she stopped, she’d collapse.

And then all of this would mean nothing, they all would have died for nothing, and I can’t let that happen . . .

They cut through a small storage compartment that was partly lit and Nadia slowed, looked around the room thoughtfully. Racks of tall, cylindrical metal tanks lined both walls, and although they were marked with Russian letters, Foster figured the
Volkov
probably had all the basics—oxygen, nitrogen, acetylene, others with science-specific purpose. She could see what Nadia was thinking, but they didn’t have another detonator; it was too late.

They stepped through a double hatch and into a connecting hall that was too dark to see—and both women froze as the dizzying fumes washed over them, the chemical scent of acetylene gas. Foster reached out towards the wall and felt the cold metal of a pressurized canister beneath her fingertips. They could hear it now, the soft clink of metal ahead and the low hiss of escaping gas. It was a storage corridor—and one or more of the tanks had broken loose.

Nadia reached back and took her arm, urging her forward. Foster tried to breathe shallowly as they edged through the darkness, the heavy etherlike smell making her queasy and lightheaded.

“There is a hatch somewhere to the left . . .” Nadia said.

Lights suddenly snapped on in front of them, illuminated the tank-lined corridor with a necrotic blue glow. Foster saw the loose canisters rolling on the deck, the closed hatch a few feet behind them—

—and the source of the light, towering in the sickly gloom not twenty feet ahead. Foster wanted to scream, to run, but her body had seized, her heart no longer seemed to beat from the absolute dread that enveloped her.

Goliath had been waiting for them.

Nadia stared at the creature, shocked.

How did it—

The cameras. She’d forgotten.

The monstrous beast clomped forward through the hissing corridor and she saw that it had repaired itself, that the damage from the explosive grenade had been patched over clumsily with uneven tatters of rotting human tissue. There were no sparks, no flashes of electricity that could set off the streaming gas.

A confused, terrified whisper from behind. “Nadia—?”

Nadia didn’t answer, didn’t move as she realized what the intelligence held in one giant hydraulic fist. It moved closer and she could smell the sphacelation of its human parts beneath the reek of gas—but still she couldn’t move.

The low red light of the detonator blinked from between the skeletal fingers.

The creature clanked to a halt two meters in front of them and raised the hand with the detonator. Nadia could see that it was still counting down, that the numbers had fallen away to less than ten. Without the thermite grenade, it was useless, but she realized that the intelligence knew that; it had detached the timer for another reason entirely.