Monster Nation(99)

Nilla strained against the manacle. It started to come off but it looked like it might take the skin of her hand with it. Jesus, that would suck, she thought. When you were dead you had to be careful about these things. 'How did you manage this, anyway? Is Dick around here somewhere bashing in electrical panels with his face?'

'Dick's close by, but no, lass, this was an inside job.'

She sat down and tried to relax. She had gotten herself out of bondage before. At the hospital, back when she thought she was still alive, she had crawled out of four point restraints. She looked at the manacle. Studied it. Maybe' maybe if she twisted her hand thusly while tugging gently, like so' 'An inside job? You were able to infiltrate somebody dead into this place?'

'Oh, ho, lass, now that would be a treat of a thing to do. Yet perhaps not all my good servants are dead, hmm? At least, they don't all start out that way.'

'I hate it when you get all cryptic,' Nilla told him, her eyes narrowing. The manacle fell to the floor with a noisy crash. She was free.

The Hindu notion of the oversoul is obsessing me today, it sounds so much like the photon monobloc. Everywhere and everywhen, eternal and omnipresent, creating of itself a new definition of time and space. Roasted a chicken tonight for dinner, though she wouldn't take any. I saved the bones' has it really come to that? I suppose it has. [Lab Notes, 3/16/04]

The dead came lumbering through the halls of Florence-ADX and they devoured whatever crossed their path. Soldiers, unable to get their weapons up in time. Survivors, defenseless, who could only raise their arms across their faces, who could only crouch down, trying to make themselves small, trying to get away.

Sergeant Horrocks lead a surgical counter-offensive deep into the heart of the prison, looking for a defensible position from which to start pushing back the enemy. He had twenty years of experience running raids and building firebases. He set up barricades of heavy furniture, filing cabinets, anything that wasn't bolted down. He designated free fire zones and detailed squads to maintain various positions and hold them to the end.

Clark listened to the preparations on his cell phone as he and Vikram crossed the prison from one end to the other, headed for the infirmary. 'Will they stand a chance, do you think?' Vikram asked. He had his pistol in his hand, low but ready.

'These kids are young but Rumsfeld plugged them right into hell in Iraq with nothing but the uniforms on their backs and they made it. They up-armored their own vehicles and they wrote whole new chapters in the book on guerilla warfare. If anyone on earth can survive this, it's my company.' Clark gritted his teeth at the thought of not being beside them. It was no foolish urge toward heroism, but instead a deeply inculcated and endlessly reiterated desire to protect his troops. No officer could function without that drive. He forced himself to accept that by securing the prison terminals and locking the doors down he was serving a higher purpose than he would if he waded into the fray and got himself killed.

Of course if he couldn't go to help the troops, he couldn't ask them to come assist him, either. Clark and Vikram were on their own.

'It's just up there,' he said, drawing to a stop a dozen yards from the infirmary. What he expected to find inside he just didn't know.

That was no way to run an operation. He gestured for Vikram to head down a side passage, to a side door. A classic flanking maneuver. The Sikh Major nodded his understanding. For all of Clark's failures it was good to know that one person on the planet still trusted him implicitly. He watched Vikram Singh Nanda's turban disappear around a corner of the hallway and then he pushed forward to the open door of the infirmary himself.

Inside long shadows lay draped across a double line of beds. Over each cot a set of ballistic nylon restraints hung down from the ceiling, the buckles undone, the Velcro catches dangling open. The aisle between the beds was packed with wheeled carts full of supplies and equipment. The far end of the room was an enclosed space walled in glass'an intensive care unit. Clark thought he saw some motion there. He kept low, crouched down to avoid anything that might jump out and try to devour his face.

Something was definitely moving behind the glass. Clark found the door of the ICU room, found the brushed aluminum handle, tried pulling down on it. It started to move, gratingly, but then stopped. Out of ten thousand open doors he'd found the only one that was locked.

Or perhaps barred. He slowly straightened up to his full height, intending to peek through the glass and see what was obstructing the handle.

An intercom unit squealed into life. 'Hey there, wonk,' the Civilian said.