Authors: Louise Voss
Closing the door quietly behind him, gun down by his side, McCarthy tiptoed along the landing, wishing he was lighter on his feet and wondering what the fuck was going on. He peered into Kolosine’s room.
‘Holy—’
He didn’t care for the head scientist. But seeing him with a bullet hole in his forehead made his insides flip. He pressed his back against the open door, concealing himself inside Kolosine’s room. He looked out. No movement; no noise either. As quietly as he could, McCarthy exited the room and moved along the hall. He passed another door and looked in. One of the scientists – Chip – with his face obliterated. And in the room next to his, the housekeeper, Adoncia, also dead. He paused at the corner that led to the stairs: one flight up were the other bedrooms; the labs were one flight below. Where was Thompson? He was supposed to be on night duty, keeping an eye on the CCTV, but the lazy bastard had probably fallen asleep. And what about the other guards?
Holding his gun against his chest, he stepped out from the corner wall.
Nothing.
He tried to process what he knew. A black-clad woman. Who the hell was she? So far, they had got nowhere in their attempts to find out who had blown the hotel to shit. Now it looked like the hunt was over. The terrorists had come to them.
But he had no idea how many of them there were in the building. If it was one woman, he could handle that. More, and his priority should be to raise the alarm. Kolosine’s office, with the only goddamn phone in this freaking place, and the only means of contacting the outside world since the internet went down, was on the floor below. That’s where he needed to head.
Except Kate was upstairs.
He paused. Kate’s bedroom was on the floor above. Plus Junko. Were they already dead? The possibility made him feel sick. Over the last few days he had bonded with both of them, especially Dr Maddox. Should he go up first, check they were OK and, if so, get them into a safe place?
The dilemma paralysed him for a moment, then he made his decision. The priority had to be to raise the alarm. As he crept towards the stairwell, his eye fell upon the fire alarm on the wall. He could set it off, alert anyone who was in the building – but it would alert the intruder or intruders too; better to maintain the element of surprise. He didn’t get why the assassin hadn’t come to his room. But he wasn’t going to bitch about it.
He dashed down the first flight of stairs, then crouched and pointed his gun down the second flight. Still no sign of anybody. He descended the remaining stairs and walked as quietly as he could along the hallway, passing the security room. He went inside. Slumped over the desk, beneath a bank of blank CCTV screens, was Agent Thompson.
‘Nick?’
McCarthy tugged on his colleague’s shoulder, and Thompson’s head rolled back. His throat had been slashed. Blood pooled on the floor around him, dripping from the chair, oozing into the instrument panel on which the dead agent rested.
McCarthy gagged. An image flashed through his mind of Thompson with his wife and kids, laughing together at a fundraising event last Christmas. Shock and sadness were quickly replaced by fury, a quiet anger that rose up through his body, made him want revenge, caused him to picture himself putting a bullet into the motherfucker who had done this.
He pressed a button on the control panel, switching the CCTV back on. The screens lit up, and he leaned forward, barely breathing, for a better look.
There were two people in the lab, standing over a microscope, apparently oblivious to what else was happening in the building. They were wearing bio-suits, so he struggled at first to make out who it was. But then one of them turned to face the camera and he saw that it was Kate. He needed to get out of here, raise the alarm, then get straight to the lab.
As he turned to go, his eye fell upon the next screen. It showed a woman walking cautiously along a hallway.
Shit, it was
this
hallway.
As he reacted, instinctively raising his gun, the woman stepped into the doorway. Her eyes widened when she saw him and he fired first, hitting her square in the chest, waiting for the blood to bloom and fountain around him. But there was no blood. She must be wearing a Kevlar vest. She began to fall, winded, pulling the trigger of her own gun on her way down, a fluke shot that entered McCarthy’s right ear and exited the back of his head. The world folded in on him in a nanosecond.
‘That sounded like a gunshot,’ Kate said.
Junko’s face, behind the plastic screen of her helmet, had gone pale. ‘Are you … sure?’
Kate nodded. ‘Definitely.’
‘What shall we do?’ Junko asked nervously.
‘There’s a back exit, isn’t there? The one they brought Officer Buckley through.’
Junko nodded eagerly. ‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Let’s go out, wait, see if we can find McCarthy or Thompson … find out what the hell is going on.’
To reach the exit, they had to go through the small room in which Officer Marshall Buckley had died. The room had been cleaned out now, the body sealed and shipped out by air to be added to the piles of corpses awaiting cremation.
She could almost feel Buckley’s presence as they hurried to the door. She pushed down the metal handle.
‘Oh, shit.’ Of course, it was locked. Why had she been expecting anything different? She looked for a set of keys, but they were nowhere to be found.
‘I’m scared, Kate. What if it’s the terrorists – the people who bombed the hotel?’
‘It’s OK.’ She might have given Junko a hug had they not been wearing these stupid suits. ‘Look, maybe it’s nothing to worry about.’ She forced a laugh. ‘Might have been McCarthy dropping his gun or something. I wouldn’t put it past him.’
Junko didn’t look convinced.
‘Listen, Kate, I need to tell you about what I found, with the virus, just in case … in case I die and you survive.’
‘Junko, don’t be—’
They both turned at the same time. They had heard another bang. Not a gunshot this time, but a door slamming, metal on metal. And the faint sound of voices, getting closer. Somebody was coming.
Paul rented a car from a place on the edge of town and drove it to the diner where Rosie worked. He parked up and went to sit on a wooden bench outside, waiting for Rosie to finish her late shift. Through the window he could see that Lucy was with her, and he smiled as he watched them working together. Rosie must have sensed someone watching her, because she looked up. Maybe it was a trick of the light through the glass, but he could have sworn she blushed, before tucking a few loose strands of hair behind her ear and attending to a customer.
He was hit by a vision of Rosie naked, her limbs entwined with his, her soft breasts pressed against his chest, her thighs parting as she looked into his eyes and gasped his name as he pushed into her …
Kate’s face swam into his vision and he felt a stab of guilt. But surely it was natural to find other women attractive. Humans were not meant to be monogamous … He shook his head, disgusted with himself. It was Kate he wanted. Kate he loved.
Like he’d told her, Rosie was helping him with the search for Mangold, that was all.
Half an hour later, at midnight, Rosie and Lucy emerged into the balmy night air.
‘Evening, Mr Craig,’ smiled Lucy, though some of her usual sparkle was missing. Worried about her friends in LA, Paul guessed.
‘What’s up?’ Rosie asked. ‘Something happened?’
Paul looked at Lucy, who put her hands up. ‘OK, I get the hint. I’ll wait in the car.’ She held her palm out for the keys.
When she’d gone, Rosie sat down on the bench next to Paul. ‘I went back to see Jon,’ he said. He had decided not to tell her that Watton had asked him to return. ‘I had some more questions I needed to ask him.’
‘Oh, Paul, I hope you haven’t made him more sick.’
‘He was fine. Keen to talk, in fact. And I found out some interesting stuff.’
He recounted most of what Watton had told him, omitting any mention of her dad.
‘So what now?’ Rosie asked, when he’d finished.
‘I’ve rented a car and I’m going to head to LA, to talk to this Dr Diaz. Want to come?’ He looked right at her, a laugh in his voice to let her know that he was joking, much as he would have liked to have her company for a while longer.
She grinned back at him. ‘Sure, nothing I’d like better than to hang out with a bunch of cons.’ The grin died and she looked towards the car where her daughter was waiting for her. ‘No, Paul, I need to be around for Lucy. She’s freaking out about this virus. Anyway, you’ll never get permission to visit a prison that close to LA, not with the outbreak! They’ll be desperate to keep everybody out, stop it getting in and infecting the inmates. If I were you I’d call them up before you drive all the way over there to be told “no visitors”.’
‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘What will I do without you?’
She inclined her head, and he noticed the precise angle her lips curled upwards when she was flattered. ‘Come back soon and tell me how you got on?’ she suggested, looking at him hopefully.
‘You bet.’
‘Do you need to go right away? Why not come over and have lunch with us tomorrow? Or stay over tonight, if you like. It’s late. Our sofabed is real comfortable.’ The words came out in a rush and she couldn’t meet his eye.
‘I … I’d love to, but I need to drop by the hotel to pick up my stuff. I want to get going.’
‘OK. If you’re sure. But …’ She looked into his eyes and he felt warm and cold at the same time. ‘You’d be welcome to stay.’
There was a long, long pause. Paul reached out and touched Rosie’s cheek.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I would really love to … but I’d better not. Thanks again, for everything.’
As arranged, the women briefly regrouped after the first killing spree.
‘Are you hurt, Sister Cindy?’ Angelica asked, concerned. Cindy was clutching her side and gasping.
‘Took a hit,’ she said. ‘But when I was in the security room I got a good look at the screen. There are two
women in the lab. A white woman and what looked like an Asian.’
Angelica smiled. ‘Perfect.’
Simone rolled her shoulders and snapped her gum.
The heels of their leather boots clacked on the floor as all three strode towards the lab.
Angelica raised a hand to halt them. She readied her gun and prepared to open the door. At last, she was going to come face to face with the famous Dr Maddox.
Throughout the agonising wait for the door to open, Kate’s mind had been running through all the possibilities as to who might be out there. Three leather-clad women did not feature on her list.
She reached out and took Junko’s gloved hand as the women approached. All three were beautiful. One was black, the other two white: a blonde and a brunette. The blonde one walked slightly ahead of the others; the body language and the way the other two looked at her told Kate this was the leader. The brunette appeared to be in pain, walking unsteadily and pressing her hand against her ribcage.
The three came to a halt in front of the antechamber, then the blonde nodded to the black woman, who tried the door. But Kate had locked it. The black woman rolled her eyes, then pulled a gun from a holster on her thigh and shot the glass panel in the door. Fragments of glass bounced off Kate and Junko’s suits.
The blonde gestured for them to exit the room.
Kate hesitated, and the blonde said to the black woman, ‘Sister Simone …’
Simone –
Sister
Simone? – reached through the broken window, undid the lock and entered, pointing her gun at Junko’s face. She grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her towards the door. Kate had no choice but to follow.
The blonde mimed removing their helmets, then sighed impatiently as they both hesitated again, Junko eyeing the microscopes, beneath which the virus waited to be studied.
‘Take them off,’ she shouted.
Their helmets hit the floor. ‘That’s better,’ said the blonde. ‘Now take the suits off. Quickly.’
Both scientists obeyed, though Kate didn’t understand why they were being asked to do this. Did these women think the suits would slow down a bullet? Or were they planning to take them somewhere and didn’t want them to be impeded by the suits?
The blonde addressed Kate coolly: ‘Dr Maddox.’
Kate shivered. This woman knew her name. That couldn’t be good news.
She faced the outer door of the lab and shouted, as loudly as she could, ‘Help!’
Simone laughed. ‘No use shouting for help. They’re all dead.’
‘No,’ Kate breathed, shaking her head. ‘Please … no …’
‘Shut up,’ snapped the blonde. ‘Tell me, how are your efforts to create a vaccine coming along?’
Kate was confused. Maybe these women weren’t the terrorists after all. Maybe they were trying to get hold of a vaccine. ‘We don’t have a cure to the virus,’ she said. ‘You’re wasting your time.’
Simone and the brunette laughed.
‘D’you hear that, Sister Cindy?’ said Simone. ‘The doctor thinks we need some of her medicine.’
Cindy laughed, then winced with pain. The blonde was scrutinising Kate, tilting her head to one side as if she were studying a museum exhibit. It made Kate feel even more uncomfortable. But the fact that they weren’t looking for a cure confirmed her original fear. These must be the same people who had bombed the hotel. Who had killed Isaac. Hatred stirred in her chest.
Simone, who was energetically chewing gum, said, ‘Dadi Angelica, shall I kill the Japanese chick now?’
Junko whimpered and Kate grabbed hold of her. Daddy Angelica? What was that all about?
‘No!’ she addressed Angelica. ‘Who are you and what do you want?’
‘We want to save the world from itself, Dr Maddox. It’s sick, diseased. It’s been ill for a long time. But we have
the antidote to this sickness. It’s out there now, purging the planet, making it clean.’
Simone, who was still pointing her gun at Junko, said, ‘Dadi, we should hurry. Brandi will be waiting for us.’
Kate remembered the words of the sinister message Harley had told her about:
‘And she sent a plague upon the Earth, a plague born in the cradle of mankind, and those who would stand in her way were consumed by the fire of her wrath. None should dare stand in her way.’
Hearing the way these women addressed each other, like members of a religious cult, it suddenly made a lot more sense.