The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(34)
The creature forced its arm between the bars of the cell and wrapped itself around the neck of the nearest prisoner, hauling him close. Even lost in a drugged haze, the poor bastard found the voice to scream as a dozen sets of teeth clamped onto his skin and started chewing.
A pair of double doors at the other end of the hall burst open. Four men in camo ran in, two dropping to one knee and the other two aiming high, swinging their rifles toward the cell bars. I had just enough time to wave the others back toward the wall before a hurricane of bullets jackhammered through the air and left me half-blind in the muzzle flash. The creature’s pustules exploded in the fusillade, splashing yellow pus and black blood across the bars, and it slumped to the ground still clutching its bullet-riddled victim. Another prisoner’s corpse sprawled on the concrete nearby, his skull blown open by a stray round.
“Zombie up!” I hissed, prompting Eric, Leroy, and Bull to wipe the looks of horror off their faces and play listless. The other prisoners stayed where they stood, wavering on drugged feet as if nothing had happened at all.
“Jesus Christ!” shouted a voice from up the hallway. An older man in a long white lab coat and mirrored glasses stomped into view, flailing his arms as he took in the wreckage. He had a disheveled mop of black hair and fat, puffy lips that curled in disgust. “What are you idiots doing? We could have contained this.”
“They’re doin’ their bloody job,” said the scowling man who came in behind the guards. His fatigues were crisp and his black leather boots polished to a shine, his back ramrod-straight and his eyes hard enough to cut glass. He wore his salt-and-pepper hair in a buzz cut, and his accent was pure Cockney.
“Their job? Their job is to obliterate a successful test subject and potentially contaminate half the facility? Look at this mess!”
The military man waved his men back, ignoring the comment. “You done good, lads. None o’ you got any of that shite on you, right? Good. Back to your posts.”
“We’re going to need a full toxic scrub here,” the man in the lab coat fretted, his eyes concealed behind his glasses. “An atmospheric workup—”
“Oh, come off it and quit your grousing. The only mess here is comin’ out of your lab. If this is what you call a success, you’re a long way from getting paid.”
The man in the coat strode up to him, poking a slender finger against his chest as he spoke.
“Pardon me, Major, but I think I know a little more about the intricacies of this project than some hired gun. What we’re attempting here, on a quantum-chaos scale, has literally never been—”
The major’s hand shot out in a blur, locking around the other man’s finger like he was snatching a fly with a pair of chopsticks. The man in the coat yelped as his finger bent backward, slowly, hovering just shy of the breaking point.
“Nedry,” the major said, his voice a leathery growl, “the senator pulled me and my lads onto this job because we know what we’re about. I’ve been to the Temple of the Black Mother in Mogili. I’ve drunk the cold sweat of the ten dead saints. So don’t talk shite to me about black magic like I ain’t never seen it. And don’t ever touch me again unless you want to lose your finger and your cock, not necessarily in that order.”
He let go. Nedry took a stumbling step backward, shoulders hunched, clutching his finger to his chest. I had a pretty good idea of who the major was, now. If the hired thugs were his “lads,” then this had to be Angus Caine, Xerxes’s president. Senator Roth and Lauren were calling out the big guns. Literally.
“Sorry,” Nedry mumbled with his reddened face turned toward the carnage on the floor. “I’ll just…I’ll just get this cleaned up.”
“You do that,” Angus growled. He turned and strode away, leaving Nedry with the mess.
Whatever the hell was happening in this freak’s “lab,” I didn’t want any part of it. Even so, it was my best and only chance to get out of this deathtrap of a cell and hopefully—if I was really good and really lucky—get the others out too.
“Eric,” I whispered, crouching low behind a couple of the zombies, “how do they pick who gets taken out next?”
He huddled next to me, nodding toward the bars. “They just grab whoever’s closest to the door. They ain’t picky. That’s how we’ve been staying alive. We just keep to the back of the cell. Thing is, they’re taking more people out of here than they’re bringing in. Sooner or later…”
“I’m going next.”
“What?” he whispered, eyes wide. “Are you crazy?”
“I’ve got to get to a phone and call off the feds before they spook these guys. You three just hang back, keep up the zombie act, and get ready to move. When things start to happen, they’re gonna happen fast.”
Two men in yellow decontamination suits, their faces blurry behind visored hoods, dragged in some black nylon body bags and a cart of cleaning supplies. They had to come into the cell, pushing the prisoners back, to get at the two corpses inside the bars. That was my chance. I made my jaw slack and unfocused my eyes as I gently pushed my way through the tight crowd, slipping a little closer every time the cleaners’ faces turned away. Eventually, inch by inch, I made it to the front of the pack.
“It’s ridiculous, having to work under these conditions,” Nedry said to the cleaners. “They toss me table scraps and expect me to cook a gourmet meal with them.”