Xeno Sapiens (41 page)

Joel flinched and brought his pistol
around. His backward momentum carried him past the point of safe
equilibrium and he fell, knowing the ghoul would be on top of him.
He heard, as in a dream, Leon shouting at him.

“
Don’t shoot, dingus! Don’t
shoot!”

Joel paid him no attention. By God, he would finish off
his
own
ghoul. He brought his pistol up so he could stick it
against the ghoul’s forehead.

He felt a sharp blow against his right
hand. Someone was trying to pry his weapon away. He rolled away
from the clutching ghoul and stood. The ghoul wore a bloodstained,
white suit.

And Leon was bellowing.

“
What the hell do you think you’re
doing, you twit? Are you trying to shoot Alex again?”

It wasn’t for the reason she expected,
but the infirmary was thankfully ready when Joel and Leon brought
Alex in. Both of them were soaked to the bone and Alex looked
heartbreakingly close to the corpse-like state he had been in on
the day his arm had been severed. Ingrid had been told it looked
like gunshot wounds and the two men had not been mistaken. Two
small holes, puckered around the edges, showed in the flesh of
Alex’s upper back. The skin around the punctures and beneath his
armpit was a painful, purplish-black. The bullets had not gone
completely through. She was both disgusted and grateful they had
hit bone. Disgusted because the bones had been shattered, and
grateful because the bones had spent the best part of the bullets’
force and kept them from plowing an interstate highway through
Clifton’s innards.

The bullet lower on his back was
another matter. Ingrid put her ear to Clifton’s right side. She
could hear no trace of a heartbeat. No doubt about it even without
a stethoscope. The lung on that side was collapsed.

Leon studied Ingrid with bloodshot
eyes. They were tired and hopeless. Both men dripped water onto the
clean, white tile.

“
Is there anything we can do,” Leon
asked. “I know we need to get back to the gate, but we thought
maybe...since we brought him up here....”

“
Did he say anything? About
anybody?”

“
Nothing,” Leon answered. “Just came
staggering up the road in the rain. Damn near got his head shot
off. Then I saw the blood and all those bullet holes. I knew he was
dead. I still don’t know how he made it. God knows how far he
walked like that.”

What is it you want to tell
me, Alex? What made you come back through this when by all rights
you should be dead?

“
I’ll take care of it,” Ingrid said.
Her hurt showed in her pinched face. She didn’t need confirmation.
Somehow, she knew Alex was all she had left.

“
Are you sure,” Leon said, eying
Ingrid closely. “You’re taking this awfully well.”

“
What good would it do to break down?
We’ve all been through too much. We’ve learned to take things
well.”

“
Yeah,” Leon said dubiously, looking
at the jagged hinges on which the infirmary door had been straight
and true only thirty hours before. “I guess we have.” He clapped
Joel on the shoulder.

“
Come on, Joe. Josh probably has the
whole store in his back pocket by now.” He gave Ingrid one last
chance. “You’re sure you don’t want any help?”

She shook her head, not looking at
him.

Leon and Joel left to stand guard in
the rain. By the time they knew any different, the night’s work was
done.

********************

Ingrid tended Alex’s wounds. She had
already run two units of blood. She was no pulmonary specialist,
but she felt Alex would make it. He had taken three bullets, two of
them flesh wounds. The third slug was the worry. It had collapsed a
lung and it was only by God’s grace that Alex had made it back
before enough fluid had collected to drown him. With deceptive ease
she placed a tube in the bullet wound and snaked it around until
she found the ragged entry hole in his lung. She worked
emotionlessly, knowing an untimely breakdown might well cost Alex
his life.

She attached the free end of the tube
to a suction pump. The smooth, efficient hum of the high speed
electric motor buzzed lightly. An oily, brownish exudate began to
filter through the suction line and out of Alex’s lung.

She reached for some bandages in the
wall cabinet. She had begun to shake so badly that when she touched
them, the entire box tumbled out and scattered on the floor. She
flinched back and her retreating hand brushed a jar of cotton swabs
that tumbled out as well.

She braced herself for the crash.
Instead of breaking, the jar bounced once on its thick bottom with
a heavy “clunk” and rolled along the floor. Swabs spewed out in a
fan shape.

She put her face in her hands and
breathed heavily. In her mind’s eye she saw the face of insanity
and it hid behind the striking, flesh and blood features of Josh
Hall.

Ingrid got a grip on herself. She
looked at the wall, concentrating through a furry buzzing that
vibrated behind the bone of her forehead like a huge
hornet.

She still had Alex, but at what price?
What had happened to Seth? Everyone and everything she had come to
hold valuable was gone.

But, oh my God, you sonofabitch. If I get through this
night, you’ll
pay more than
you ever believed. God had better be on your side
because I’m the devil you’ll have to pay. If I could, I would make
you die slowly. And there will be another Seth. You won’t stop
him.

She didn’t consider how easily the
resolve to wish a man dead had come. She felt she could calmly take
the pistol in Merrifield’s office and shoot Hall in the eye,
watching without emotion as most of the back of his head blew
away.

The tube in Alex’s back had become
mostly clear, just a few drops of the brownish liquid clinging in
the valleys. She attached a new tube similar to a Foley catheter to
the suction pump and placed it in the wound. She reversed the flow
on the suction pump and the tube swelled until it formed an
airtight seal. Ingrid listened to Clifton’s back with a
stethoscope. His breathing took on more resonance as the lung
re-inflated.

The pump began to hitch and whine,
automatically ceasing pumping action when the pressure in the tube
equaled atmospheric pressure. Ingrid clamped the tube close to
Clifton’s back and shut the machine down. Using the same pair of
surgical scissors she had used on the day Alex lost his arm, she
cut the tube.

“
Ingrid?”

Her name drifted through the air like a
snowflake, so delicate that the slightest amount of heat or
mishandling would destroy it.

Alex’s eyes were open, but vague. He
lay on his stomach, his cheek mashed against the bed. The weight
loss from his coma had revealed his ribs. He tried to turn over and
grimaced in pain.

“
Here,” Ingrid said, placing her hands
on his shoulders. “Let me help you.”

She turned him over and strained to
help him to a sitting position. He needed to sit up anyway to keep
more fluid from collecting in his lungs. It was a plus that he was
awake.

Clifton’s thin hair was matted to his
scalp. Ingrid had tried to immobilize the shattered bones in his
shoulder as best she could, but whenever he moved she could still
hear them grind. He gritted his teeth to keep from crying
out.

“
Do you think you could handle a
sedative,” Ingrid asked.

Clifton waved the suggestion away
weakly with his good arm. He felt nauseatingly woozy and briefly
wondered why he was even trying to stay awake. There was something
sticking in his back that felt as big as a garden hose. The aches
in his shoulder and back were helped past painful to almost
unbearable because of it.

“
Ingrid,” he said again, his voice
slightly stronger. She leaned toward him until her ear was at his
mouth.

“
Seth,” she said anxiously, hoping
irrationally for good news. “Jon? Alan? Jimmy?”

“
Gone,” Clifton whispered painfully.
“I’m sorry. Hall got all of them.”

“
All,”
Ingrid said unbelievingly. Alex’s eyes had
closed and his head listed to one side. She patted his face, trying
to wake him up.

“
Don’t pass out on me, Alex. Wake
up!”

“
Ahrrr-hummm,”
he mumbled groggily. But his
eyes opened. Barely.

“
Listen to me,” Ingrid said. “You’re
in bad shape. The phones are out, so I can’t get an ambulance.
You’re going to have to trust me to take care of you.”

“
Dead,” Alex muttered. “All of them.”
His head rolled from side to side. “Shot me. Shot Jimmy. Cut Alan’s
throat. I’m sorry, so sorry...”

“
Alex, I’ve got to get someone to help
us. I want you to sit right there and don’t try to
move.”

His eyes darted open and he stared at
Ingrid in terror. He reached with surprising speed across the bed
with his left hand and grabbed Ingrid’s wrist. His hand was cold
and clammy.

“
Don’t leave me.”

Ingrid barely started at his touch, but
her guts were in turmoil.

“
I’ll be right back,” she said gently.
“I have to get help.”

She extricated herself from his grip,
queasy at the tenacity with which he held on.

He returned to his state of liquid
consciousness. Ingrid spared him a final, dreadful look before
leaving the infirmary to find help.

********************

She had pounded on doors for the past five minutes and she
knew -
knew
-
there were people behind some of those doors. She could not find a
single soul pottering around the building. Not in the commissary,
not in the labs, not in the sleeping quarters. Some of the rooms
were unlocked and their doors swung in on empty cubicles. Those
doors that were locked, she pounded on them hard enough to bruise
her knuckles.

“
Goddammit, I know you’re in
there,”
she
raved. “Open up! I’ve got a wounded man that needs
help!”

There was no answer. The rappings and
poundings echoed and re-echoed through the empty corridors. They
flew around corners and out of doors only to disappear with no ears
to interpret their signals.

Growing more frantic by the second, she
picked up an extension phone and tried to call out again. The
phones were still out, but sudden inspiration struck.

“
Oh, you stupid bitch,” she said
aloud. Seeing a way out at last, she dialed the operator. She had
no choice but to let Jason Lewis in on it now.

A cool, disconnected hiss came to her
ears, then a dial tone, then a series of clicks and burrs that
repeated over and over until Ingrid jiggled the cutoff buttons. The
dial tone came back, then the clicks and burrs started again. In
wild frustration, she hauled off and flung the receiver as hard as
she could down the hallway. The coiled cord caught it and flung it
back toward her.

“
Goddam fucking sonofabitch
bastard!”
she shrieked to the lifeless hallways. When the echoes
dissolved they were replaced by a sussurant lulling sound that
might have been the respiration of a sleeping animal.

Her last hope was to get Joel and Leon.
To hell with the gate, they were needed up here. She went to the
second of two supply closets and grabbed a raincoat. She walked
into the main corridor, fiddling with the buttons on the coat. Her
head was down and, when she looked up, her heart froze. It felt as
if it would burst if it beat again. She stared, terrified, at the
end of the corridor.

Through the thick, wire-mesh laced
glass, she saw the outline of a man’s head and shoulders. The
outline turned and she saw the thin, brutal silhouette of a rifle
barrel.

She thought it might be Joel or Leon,
but then she heard the secretive, gentle jiggling of a door latch.
The heavy chain on the inside of the door rattled
imploringly.

Did he kill them, too?
Could I even make it out the back door without being cut down? And
could I leave Alex? He’s certainly in no condition to
travel.

She retreated, hoping the bright glare
in the building and the semi-opaque glass of the door would
conspire to keep her hidden. She retraced her path to the
infirmary. The sound of the facility’s machinery had receded to
night levels and she heard the hiss of rain. That was what she
thought sounded like breathing.

Alex was as she had left him. She shook
him gently, careful not to let her over agitated state cause her to
rouse him too forcibly. He stirred stupidly and made a thick,
groggy sound.

“
Come on, Alex. I need your
help.”

“
Huh-wha?”
he mumbled. His eyelids
fluttered.